#distrobox

Edit: I was able to install those but now I'm stuck here

Open Konsole named Profiles, with own identification and a custom command, using a keyboard shortcut

This solves a problem I had with wanting to quickly start up a Distrobox container using a shortcut key, but also being able to differentiate it visually from my normal Konsole terminal screen I’d use on Manjaro Linux. It is extremely quick and the named Konsole Profile has a different colour as well as a different window title bar. I needed this as my Starship custom prompt was not playing ball with showing the change of OS properly (it could do so, but the formatting broke all the time). This method I describe here is solid, and works irrespective of the prompt.

I thought this was worth sharing as firstly I could find no search results showing how to do this, and secondly, it can actually be applied for purposes other than just starting a Distrobox container. Any terminal command can be used. It is also a useful way to actually use these named Profiles that Konsole has in KDE Plasma.

My video also gives a taste of what Distrobox does, so if you’re interested further in Distrobox I have also included a link below my video, to a Distrobox overview video by someone else.

Enable both backward and forward compatibility with software and freedom to use whatever distribution you’re more comfortable with. Distrobox uses podman or docker to create containers using the Linux distribution of your choice. The created container will be tightly integrated with the host, allowing sharing of the HOME directory of the user, external storage, external USB devices and graphical apps (X11/Wayland), and audio.

Ideally, you would probably use a Flatpak or Appimage application for your main computer, if they’re available. But if they’re not, this is an amazingly easy alternative. The apps boot as quickly as if they are the native apps for your host machine. You could probably also manually install these containers, but why, if Distrobox largely automates this for you and integrates them so tightly with your computer, that all your home directories are already integrated and visible.

It’s also a great way to learn a different distro and how its package manager and syntax works.

It is like a Linux Subsystem for Linux (like Windows has a Linux Subsystem for Windows).

Their site has extensive documentation as well as a good video giving an overview of how this works.