I use toolbox: Distrobox is a pretty horrible shell script and deleted parts of my home directory when I tried that.
In the end I just pointed toolbox to a script named podman that just adjusts the setup to what I need, implementing the missing features I wanted that way.
Why not both ? Toolbox is the fedora/redhat solution, which is the why, and makes it the choice when something’s in the fedora repositories, or if you want to trial it before (considering) rpm-ostree install, but an Arch distrobox gets you the AUR, not to be sneered at…
Distrobox is directly inspired from Toolbx and was created because of limitations of Toolbx and how Toolbx’ maintainers didn’t want to implement some features at that moment in time.
Currently, Distrobox is almost a superset of Toolbx. Though, I’ve come to the understanding that Toolbx does better at some tasks.
If you would like to stick to just one of them, then Distrobox is probably still the better one and should be preferred. However, if its added functionality doesn’t do it for you, then please feel free to continue using Toolbx.
Why is toolbox preinstalled and not distrobox?
Because Toolbx predates Distrobox and is developed by developers that are associated with Fedora and even specifically designed in hopes of solving some issues pertaining to Fedora’s Atomic distros.
Because Toolbox is a Red Hat/Fedora project and Distrobox isn’t. Also, Distrobox is a much more recent project (2021) compared to Toolbox, which was developed back in 2018. When Silverblue came out, there was a need to make it easier to install apps, and thus Toolbox was born.
Since Toolbox is a Red Hat/Fedora project, it means that it’s officially supported, whereas Distrobox isn’t. Not that it means much from a community support/home use case of course, but that might matter if you’re an enterprise and you want support from Red Hat or official Fedora communities.
But both use podman behind the scenes so internally they aren’t that different, but you can think of Distrobox as a more distro-agnostic and user-friendly version of Toolbox. If you’re a home user then stick to Distrobox.
For general usage, it doesn’t really matter. Distrobox is inspired on toolbox and provides some added functionality and configurability, like init scripts and the ability to run different distros, as well as creating desktop shortcuts on your host system. If you don’t need all of that, I’d stick with toolbox, as it’s preinstalled and works well.
I actually think 2024 has a very good chance of being the year of wayland, scene graph api just got finished wlroots side, wine is rapidly approaching ready for wayland, sway-side all that’s missing is global shortcuts and single window capture (and disabling vsync for games is about to be merged, if you care about that).
It’s all rapidly shaping up, they even fixed nightlight nvidia side. I think it all depends on nvidia fixing shit.
With GNOME and KDE going Wayland only, it is all but over for X. Qt, GTK, and Electron already work on Wayland so most apps are ready. Cinnamon, XFCE, Enlightenment, and MATE all have Wayland plans now. There are a few compositor libraries that other window managers and desktop environments can leverage.
NVIDIA is slowly getting their act together. Many of the legitimate complainants are being addressed. There are desirable features starting to appear that are Wayland only. Even non-Linux systems are adding Wayland support.
It is hard to believe after so many years but I think that, by Christmas 2024, most Linux users will have stopped using X and maybe even stopped talking about it.
Well this was clear as mud. Thanks for everyone responding but as far as I can tell there isn’t a definitive answer to my question and I’m still at “worst case scenario it’s a reinstall of the OS.”
Next question: Has anyone made an AMD card that A. fits in the GPU bay of a Fractal Node 202 and has significantly more grunt than a blower-style GTX-1080? I think the 6700 was the most recent viable option I saw? I think? It’s been a hot minute since I went GPU shopping, but since time lost all meaning a few year minutes ago I…
Like the whole thing that made me pick the GTX-1080 I’ve got is…well I got it for free out of a machine a relative of mine was retiring, and also that it ejects all hot air through the IO plate out of the chassis, which I felt was wise given the Node 202’s respiratory limitations. Then they stopped making blower-style cards.
It shouldn’t be clear as mud. The answer is: it will work out of the box. Just try it.
As I said in another comment, I had a system running nvidia and Pop. AMD card worked with no issues and no additional software installed. I removed the nvidia stuff some months later. It doesn’t affect anything in the meantime.
The only reason it will not work would be if OP has manually configured stuff in /etc/X11 in some way. You can even have both in the system at the same time (which does require a little bit of extra configuration). Absolute worst case you check out /var/log/Xorg.0.log it tells you the config you forgot in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf 5 years ago doesn’t work because the GPU is gone, you delete it, restart Xorg and you’re good to go.
Even on Windows it’s kind of a myth. Some people are like you need to DDU the old driver in safe mode before swapping them out. You can really have them both installed it’s just going to be weird because on Windows both vendors come with ridiculous amounts of bloat.
AMD cards just works as long as your distro is reasonably up to date. No extra drivers, in fact, installing AMDGPU-PRO is usually worse unless you fit some specific use cases.
I have a framework and love it but it’s probably not the best option for this. It’s kinda overkill and they can get a bit hot and loud. More of a desk laptop than a lap laptop IMHO. Also depends on how long you need the battery to last but this is reportedly better in the newer models.
A heads up if you have a G-Sync monitor from that same era: it may not do variable rate with Freesync. I was ready to pull the trigger and upgrade my 1080 Ti to an AMD card when I caught that detail. So now I need to justify the cost of a new main monitor as well if I want to have smooth variable refresh. Good luck!
My Gigabyte…what’s this thing’s model number? M34WQ is AMD Freesync compatible but not Nvidia G-Sync. Wait, do either of those two technologies work with Linux?
Aside from removing /etc/X11/xorg.conf because I had generated one via Nvidia’s XServer settings - nope! The custom config there did prevent X from loading properly, switched to a tty to delete the config, restarted, and was perfectly fine afterwards.
Yes. X11 these days usually auto-configures on its own (to my understanding, at least) - when you generate one with Nvidia’s settings it will add some stuff that is specific to the Nvidia driver, and thus once the card/drivers isn’t present, then X11 can’t start.
I had removed the drivers before swapping out the card in preparation, so I’m not 100% sure if said proprietary extensions doesn’t load because of the lack of drivers, or the lack of the card itself - probably both to be honest.
But either way, X11 wasn’t affected by the removal of the custom config, and there wasn’t ever one present until I made one via nvidia-settings (other than, it started working of course).
Also, unless you’re very dependant on some specific X11 apps, you don’t need Xorg any more so I reckon you should switch to Wayland for a better experience (smoother, no screen tearing, high refresh rates, better multi-screen / multi-DPI handling etc).
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