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Easy Containers has gone to the next-level

July 11, 2025 — BarryK

I posted about usability enhancements for Easy Containers yesterday:

There were some bugs and issues to resolve. Now fixed, and looking so good. Here are the newcomers:

img1

Here is a snapshot of the desktop, note that sda1 and sdb2 are mounted:

img2

Containers "excalibur", "x2", "x3" and "devx" are full EasyOS desktops. The first three are just normal desktops; devx is special, as it has the devx .sfs loaded. Container devx also has less security; as this is a compiling and project development container, it needs maximum power, despite being in a container.

A requirement is that the devx container be able to access partitions outside the container. For example, you may have your software compiling projects somewhere, in another partition. I took a sledge-hammer approach to this; there is a new variable in the 'configuration' file of each container. In /mnt/wkg/containers/devx/configuration, there is this new entry:

EC_ACCESS_MOUNTED='true'

When set to "true", when the devx container is started, all partitions mounted in the main desktop, will be bind-mounted into the container. With the exception of the current host partition, which is sdc2 -- this is done to retain some modicum of security. Yeah, sledge-hammer approach; maybe it could be fine-tuned in the future, be able to select particular partitions to bind-mount. Click on "devx" icon, and a couple of seconds later it is up and running:

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...see the two partition icons. Click on them and ROX window opens. The devx .sfs is loaded, so all the development tools are there, including git.

Not to forget, /files folder is still shared with the main desktop and other containers. I used TAS to take desktop shots in each container, they got saved to /files/media/images, and there they all were back on the main desktop.

Flipping back to the main desktop, and back into the devx desktop, is just the blink of an eye.

In all of these desktops, PKGget is available. It is now running on steroids, as a GUI frontend for APT. I posted a snapshot of the new PKGget:

But, can also use APT directly in a terminal; and yes, it also automatically syncs with PKGget. I started the x2 container and tested running apt in a terminal:

img4

PKGget has some advantages over running APT in a terminal; one being that it will offer to install the app to run non-root. For example, offer to run Abiword as user "abiword". This is another feature that sets EasyOS apart from all other Linux distributions.

That non-root feature can also be added to running apt in a terminal -- a future project.

And yes, running an app as its own user is supported in the containers. It is taking security to the next-level; not only are you inside a container, but running as its own user isolates it from other apps that are running as their own users. On top of that, many apps, such as a web-browser, run their own sandbox. Incredible!

This apps-running-non-root feature has been in Easy for a few years; see this post in 2021:

It is so much fun having all these desktops, just a click away. I was flipping btween them just for fun of it.

Still a few things to fix. Expect the next release of Easy Excalibur in a day or two. Will also upload the woofQ2 tarballs; FeodorF has been finding how simple and fun woofQ2 is:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=14605

...yes, you can build your own EasyOS in 30 minutes. Note though, the next upload will be very much improved, so if you want to try it, wait a couple more days.

This post has turned into a bit of a presentation how Easy is very different from other Linux distributions. Might as well throw this in; Easy has four package managers, not just PKGget:

https://easyos.org/user/package-manager-concepts.html

...relevant to reference that here, as three of them, PKGget, Appi and Flapi, work in containers.

I posted a link from the forum to this blog post, in case anyone would like to contribute some thoughts:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=14734      

Tags: easy