[systemd-devel] How is desktop container getting along?

[Leslie Zhai]

Hi David,

Thanks for reply ;)

0. yes, container (namespaces, seccomp, pivot_root, cgroups) is more 
than that!

1 && 2. I just take cross library as an instance ;)

3. I have no idea about X11, but there is isolated Wayland solution, 
isn' it? so I want to follow the desktop container and GNOME sandboxed 
application, is there some demo or skeleton available?

On 10/17/2014 04:21 PM, David Timothy Strauss wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 9:47 AM, Leslie Zhai <xiangzhai83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> But there are only lots of use cases about Linux Server and web application,
>> as a Linux desktop geek, I often consider about the disadvantage of
>> traditional deployment of Linux desktop application. Krita, for example, an
>> awesome digital painting application in KDE`s calligra suite, is depend on
>> Qt4, kdepimlibs 4.6.0, kdelibs4 and sort of KDE4 relative libraries; but
>> also as a KDE develop, my desktop environment is Qt5 and KF5, so I have to
>> git clone KDE4 relative libraries` repositories, then built them by myself
>> as what other Linux geeks often experienced
>
> Desktop containers are not that far along, at least in the sense of
> seeing any major distribution on the verge of installing applications
> via containers. Even if/when it happens, it may not be the panacea for
> dependencies you're expecting.
>
> First, there are multiple ways to install different library versions
> simultaneously without containers. Distributions regularly do this for
> things like GTK2 and GTK3. Have you checked with your distribution?
>
> Second, you don't need containers to package an application with its
> own libraries. Distributions usually frown on packaging shared
> libraries with an application. What you're suggesting for containers
> wouldn't be any better than packaging to /opt/krita with all libraries
> in the same directory, which is what some apps have done for years.
>
> Finally, your desktop can only support a fixed set of graphical APIs.
> Unless you render the application in the container and connect with
> something like SPICE (which wouldn't be that great), containers won't
> allow you to run arbitrary applications.
>

-- 
Regards
Leslie Zhai
a KDE developer