A Noob's MicroOS Experience (aka, Toolbox tutorial wen?)
Hi, I saw the announcement about sending MicroOS reviews here so since I tried it out a month or two ago so I guess I will share my thoughts here. I think MicroOS could benefit a lot from a toolbox tutorial in a new user welcome pop up, because when I tried out MicroOS I had only heard of the name "toolbox", but never knew what it could do at all. Toolbox makes doing "normal" Linux distro things such as installing devel packages or something else temporarily pretty painless, but because I had no idea it could do that, I was just restarting my computer every time I was trying to figure out what devel packages I needed to build a C program. Also, some other tutorials such as how to use Distrobox to simulate entire other Linux distributions could be a neat bonus. People unfamiliar with immutable distros such as myself don't know what we need, so by the time I looked up how those tools worked, I was already back to using plain vanilla Tumbleweed. Gordon Leung
On Tue, 2022-07-19 at 19:00 +0000, Gordon Leung wrote:
Hi,
Hi,
I saw the announcement about sending MicroOS reviews here so since I tried it out a month or two ago so I guess I will share my thoughts here.
Cool! :-)
I think MicroOS could benefit a lot from a toolbox tutorial in a new user welcome pop up, because when I tried out MicroOS I had only heard of the name "toolbox", but never knew what it could do at all. Toolbox makes doing "normal" Linux distro things such as installing devel packages or something else temporarily pretty painless, but because I had no idea it could do that, I was just restarting my computer every time I was trying to figure out what devel packages I needed to build a C program.
Right. So, this is going to be a bit of a shameless plug, but here we go. :-D A Google search for "MicroOS Desktop toolbox" (which of course makes only if you actually at least know toolbox exists) returned these results: https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:MicroOS/Desktop#Toolbox_-_GUI_applications_se... https://dariofaggioli.wordpress.com/2020/10/16/opensuse-microos-as-your-desk... https://dariofaggioli.wordpress.com/2021/06/18/microos-as-your-desktop-prime... (and Toolbox is mentioned in the actual talks, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2dKMfuqRnE) https://kolomansell.wordpress.com/2020/12/23/trying-out-opensuse-microos-des... From third link, the following articles are reachable: https://fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/containers_toolbox/ https://kolomansell.wordpress.com/2021/01/02/gui-inside-a-toolbox-lutris-edi... https://sysadmin-journal.com/debugging-on-microos-made-easier https://kubic.opensuse.org/blog/2019-10-22-toolbox/
Also, some other tutorials such as how to use Distrobox to simulate entire other Linux distributions could be a neat bonus.
Yeah, and about Distrobox, it was discussed, together with Toolbox, at the latest openSUSE Conference: https://events.opensuse.org/conferences/oSC22/program/proposals/3829 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2dKMfuqRnE But aside of that, Distrobox has a quite good press coverage, IMO. Just to link a few: https://www.tecmint.com/distrobox-run-any-linux-distribution/ https://fedoramagazine.org/run-distrobox-on-fedora-linux/ https://www.makeuseof.com/run-multiple-linux-distros-inside-terminal-distrob... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2dKMfuqRnE (at around min 16)
People unfamiliar with immutable distros such as myself don't know what we need, so by the time I looked up how those tools worked, I was already back to using plain vanilla Tumbleweed.
So, I guess that the material is actually there already... Maybe it's not visible/reachable enough, for the people that needs it? If yes, the first thing that comes to mind is to expand and improve (and add some of these links) the Wiki... Would that work? Any takers? Any other ideas? Thanks again and Regards -- Dario Faggioli, Ph.D http://about.me/dario.faggioli Virtualization Software Engineer SUSE Labs, SUSE https://www.suse.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------- <<This happens because _I_ choose it to happen!>> (Raistlin Majere)
Any other ideas?
One thing I've thought about that might be useful in general is to separate between administrative tasks and toolbox stuff in the terminal in some way. Could be as simple as setting up a separate terminal profile with a different colour and a small intro text about toolboxes on first launch and then making a separate desktop entry for it. (Or it could be as complex as making a whole GUI for managing toolboxes at some point) That way people who don't know about toolbox could still discover it just by checking out the pre-installed desktop apps. Might even make sense to give it some prominence over the regular terminal by pinning it to the dock or something similar, since most traditional/non-administrative terminal stuff should be done inside a toolbox anyway, if I understand the philosophy behind it correctly.
On Thu, 2022-07-21 at 13:50 +0000, Lil Frogg wrote:
Any other ideas?
One thing I've thought about that might be useful in general is to separate between administrative tasks and toolbox stuff in the terminal in some way. Could be as simple as setting up a separate terminal profile with a different colour and a small intro text about toolboxes on first launch and then making a separate desktop entry for it.
Yeah, a terminal that brings the user directly inside of a toolbox (or distrobox, actually) is something cool, that many users do already by themselves. E.g., see: - https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/useful_tips.md#using-di... - https://github.com/castrojo/ublue/blob/main/README.md#features There's also this: https://flathub.org/apps/details/dev.boxi.Boxi Which, in theory, we can pre-install. I haven't tried it properly yet, though. I believe I've read it does not work with distrobox yet, and I have to see if it works with "our" toolbox (i.e., the toolbox you have installed by default on MicroOS). If anyone is willing to give it a spin and let me/us know, that would be much appreciated. :-D
(Or it could be as complex as making a whole GUI for managing toolboxes at some point) That way people who don't know about toolbox could still discover it just by checking out the pre-installed desktop apps.
Right. The problem is that, like for everything, also when it comes to toolbox, everyone has his/hers own preferred way of using it, so it's hard to come up with a default that works well enough for everyone, and that does not upset too much everyone else. :-) But yeah, a guess a rootless toolbox is something decent to have as default. Then, if one wants more and/or different one(s), they'll set them up.
Might even make sense to give it some prominence over the regular terminal by pinning it to the dock or something similar, since most traditional/non-administrative terminal stuff should be done inside a toolbox anyway, if I understand the philosophy behind it correctly.
Yeah, well, this is what I meant when I said that it's hard to come up and push a default. However, yes, in my opinion and experience, everything that you usually do in a terminal on TW, would be done inside a toolbox/distrobox on MicroOS Desktop. TBH, I'd quite like for us to switch to distrobox, but not everyone agrees on this, and there still are a couple of issues to be solved... BTW, I'm explicitly Cc-ing Frederic to the conversation, as I know he's a distrobox user too, and I've "heard" him speaking about terminal profiles and things like that already, so he may have interesting thoughts on the subject. :-D Thanks again and Regards -- Dario Faggioli, Ph.D http://about.me/dario.faggioli Virtualization Software Engineer SUSE Labs, SUSE https://www.suse.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------- <<This happens because _I_ choose it to happen!>> (Raistlin Majere)
participants (3)
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Dario Faggioli -
Gordon Leung -
Lil Frogg