I always wonder how Docker works on macOS with a more UNIX-style kernel than Linux

It doesn’t. Macos also uses a virtual machine for docker.

but is it really that hard to do Docker/OCI out of Linux?

Yes. The runtimes containers use are dependent on cgroups, seccomp, namespaces, and a few other linux kernel specific features.

You could implement a wine like project to run the linux binaries that containers contain, and then run some sandboxing to make it be a proper container, but no virtual machines or virtual machine container runtimes* are easier.

Linuxulator, a freebsd project does the above.

https://people.freebsd.org/~dch/posts/2024-12-04-freebsd-containers/

*these are much lighter than a normal vm, I’ll need to check if this is what macos does. I know for a fact docker on windows uses a full Linux vm though.

Because one of the features of Linux that Microsoft is most interested in is docker/oci containers, but that is a feature specific to the Linux kernel (and thus requires a virtual machine).

No. Netplan uses it’s own yaml format, which people would have to learn and use. I don’t want to do that, I would rather just configure my existing networkmanager setup, rather than learning another abstraction layer over what is already an abstraction layer.

I understand that cockpit (and similar type tools) are “the whole kitchen sink” of utilities, and it may seem like they come with more than you may need. But that doesn’t change the fact that they get the job done, and in some usecases, are better than dedicated tools.

You don’t need to install cockpit on the server being configured, you can use it as a gui to connect from other machines via the flatpak, over ssh.

Netplan is an abstraction layer, so it can go over systemd-networkd, NetworkManager, or iproute. I suppose it’s better though, because it can be used with multiple backends.

Use cockpit by Red Hat. It gives you a GUI to make networking changes*, and will check if the connection still works before making the change. If the connection doesn’t work (like the ip addresses changed), it will undo the change and then warn you. You can then either force the change through or leave it be.

*via NetworkManager only.

Here’s my commentary on the options you listed in the image:

Anaconda: They changed the licensing so that it’s not really fully FOSS, as the repos have restrictions on them. There are also other issues like this dark pattern of a download page.

But, forgetting about the licensing or problematic company practices: The software itself is trash. Worst thing I’ve ever used. It’s sooooo slow to install packages when it’s doing the “solver” thing. You can use something faster like mamba or miniconda, but then you still have to deal with package availability being poor, as the anaconda repos don’t have everything, and much of what they have is often too old.

Docker desktop: It’s proprietary. I mean you can use it, but you seem to be interested in open source stuff. Also see caveats to podman desktop below.

Podman Desktop: Technically this will work. But podman desktop is really designed more for development of containerized applications, rather than developing in containers.

Nix: Nix doesn’t work on Windows, so you would have to require WSL or something like that.

Fedora VM: I recommend enlightenment as a desktop environment. Very small, but also modern and clean looking. You’ll have to configure it to be a bit more similar to windows, but it’s a lot more intuitive to use than i3.

There are some other caveats to your environment. “The right .Net Sdks version” — however, the best extensions for C# development are proprietary and cannot be freely used in the fully FOSS versions of vscode.

it also requires users to learn i3wm and possibly use the command line, which may not be ideal for everyone.

Yeah, don’t do this. I agree with @[email protected], work with them, rather than forcing them to work with you. Collaboration goes both ways.

Another recommendation I have is to just see how people in a similar circumstance do what you do. There are plenty of people who do software and game development on twitch, and you can just go on their streams and ask how they collaborate. One method I saw is using trello, a task management software, and artists would upload models there as deliverables. They already have their own workflow, which they probably work efficiently with. And it’s not really the job of an artist to integrate models and art into the game, that’s the programmers job.

noo I was wrong, I was actually referring to this: https://web.mit.edu/mprat/Public/web/Terminus/Web/main.html

Don’t have this issue on archlinux. I think there is a group, which if you are part of, you can change networking settings.

[moonpie@cachyos-x8664 ~]$ groups moonpie
sys network wheel audio kvm lp storage video users rfkill libvirt docker moonpie

Exactly this. Kde’s graphical application store actually has a warning on arch, since pacman can be even more problematic when it comes to abstraction layers like GUI’s.

At this point, rpm’s and deb packages can be auto updated through their relevant package managers. And it looks like gnome software is attempting to try to get user packages installed via flatpak entirely.

From the bottom of the installation guide: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/General_recommendations

Doesn’t fedora use zram by default nowadays?

https://linuxsurvival.com/

This is a linux terminal tutorial, but in the style of a text based rpg.

https://krunker.io/

Browser based game with slidehopping. I like to call it the only non dead movement shooter.

The respawns take forever

They take much less time now, but back when respawns took 10 minutes instead of 3, I used to do homework/work between rounds.

I got a TON of work done that way.

I made an ansible role for this:

https://github.com/CSUN-CCDC/ccdc-2024/tree/main/linux/ansible/roles/docker

It was designed for a cybersecurity competition, and can back up containers and volumes. The volume back up works by creating another container and then mounting the volume to that container, and within that container a simple tar backup is ran.

This feature used to be in KDE 5 as well though, but with a size cap. I suspect the removal of the size cap is intentional rather than a bug.

Maybe not some obscure ones, but here are some lesser known ones:

Talos Linux. It’s an immutable operating system designed specifically to deploy kubernetes.

OpenSuse Harvester Think Proxmox, but instead of VM’s and LXC containers, it’s VM’s and Kubernetes.

XCP-NG is a RHEL based distro designed for managing Linux virtual machines using the xen hypervisor, as opposed to KVM. Think Proxmox, but RHEL and Xen (also no LXC). However, it does not come with a web ui out of the box, you have to deploy it yourself. Technically, XCP is a Xen distribution, since Xen is a kernel with nothing but a hypervisor that runs under the main distro, but the primary management virtual machine is RHEL based, and uses Linux.

Speaking of Proxmox, Proxmox is technically a Linux distro.

SnowflakeOS is a project that aims to bring a GUI focused experience to NixOS.

TurnkeyLinux (site is loading very, very slowly for me right now) is not a single distribution, but rather a set of debian based distributions that are designed to be turnkey appliance virtual machines that contain and host a specific app. To deploy the app, all you have to do is set up the virtual machine.

Now, here are some not-linux, but interesting distros:

SmartOS. They ported KVM to unix, and also can use Linux syscall translation (similar to wine) to run apps in containers as well. There is also Bhyve. It’s a very interesting hypervisor platform.

OmniOS is similar. Bhyve, KVM, and Linux syscall translation in containers.

Some software is so complex and difficult that Debian does not maintain it on their own, and instead follows the upstream release cycle.

Browsers are one such example, and as you’ve discovered for me, Thunderbird is probably another.

Also, please do not recommend testing for daily usage. It does not receive critical security updates in a timely manner, including for things that would effect desktop users. Use stable, Sid, or another distro. Testing is for testing Debian ONLY, and by using Debian Testing, you are losing the advantage of immediate security fixes that come from literally any other distro.

Wish I could transcend into declarativity but the thread’s nix survivor ratio is grim

Yeah lol.

I will say, that for my server, I decided to use kubernetes + fluxcd for declaratively. My entire kubernetes “state” is declared in a git repo, and this is the popular, industry standard for things like this, called GitOps. It makes it very easy to add an app, since it’s just adding a folder + some new config files. And unlike Nix, Kubernetes and Flux are very well documented with much tooling as well. Nix doesn’t really have a working LSP or good code autocomplete, but with kubernetes, I can just start typing in a yaml file and then hit tab and it spits out the template for me. Code autocompletion with kubernetes feels much more similar to the tooling of other, more mature tooling

It’s not as declarative as nix though. There are things missing, like OCI containers could theoretically shift if you don’t rely on hashes and some other nitpicks. But declarativity is a spectrum, and I feel like, outside of scientific scenarios (think simulations where versioning, hardware, runtime etc being the same is very important), I think many non-nixos solutions are declarative enough.