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For sure, immutability is a point of the distro, but I have other reasons for using it. Namely, hardware-enablement and nice dev experience additions.
There’s definitely value in immutability, but sometimes I wish I could temporarily disable it so I can do what I need to, while easily retaining those changes on updates.
The main program that I’m unable to install is espanso. It’s an open source text-expansion program that has become invaluable to me and the way that I type.
I can build it from source, create an RPM for it, and even try layering it with rpm-ostree, but even then, I have the problem of missing libraries, like wxGTK*. Sure, I can technically manually acquire those libs and use ldconfig to configure them in a writable directory, but at that point, you’re basically suffering through a dependency nightmare that isn’t worth maintaining.
For stuff like that, I really wish that I could just scrap the immutability and simply install some more system-level packages like that more easily.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the reason I can’t simply layer the wxGTK* libs and the RPM manually:
espanso requires slightly different versions of the libs, and if I could simply symlink the newer versions that are available in the Silverblue repositories to the slightly older versions that espanso requires, I could probably get it to work.
bluefin co-maintainer here. espanso is a hard one, we have an open issue on getting it to work because it’d be something awesome to include. We might end up needing to package it but haven’t had a chance to look deeper into the issue.
You are an absolute king for this! I assumed it was too niche to have it included, but if you’re willing to consider bundling espanso in the Bluefin image, I can look into trying to solve for this.
Yeah it’s 2024, this stuff should just be built into the OS! I’m at kubecon so don’t have time to look into it now but it’d be an awesome thing to have, we’d love the help!
Didn’t know about espanso but I’ve actually searched for something like this a while back but found nothing. So thanks for mentioning it, definitely gonna give it a try.
I forget, to be honest. That was the first thing I tried but I did that weeks ago and have given up since then.
I want to say that it might have been the fact that I’d have to install and enable a GUI environment in the container, which would be, at best, odd, but at worst, buggy, since espanso would be interacting with the GUI in the container environment, rather than my host.
For sure, immutability is a point of the distro, but I have other reasons for using it. Namely, hardware-enablement and nice dev experience additions.
There’s definitely value in immutability, but sometimes I wish I could temporarily disable it so I can do what I need to, while easily retaining those changes on updates.
The main program that I’m unable to install is
espanso. It’s an open source text-expansion program that has become invaluable to me and the way that I type.I can build it from source, create an RPM for it, and even try layering it with
rpm-ostree, but even then, I have the problem of missing libraries, likewxGTK*. Sure, I can technically manually acquire those libs and useldconfigto configure them in a writable directory, but at that point, you’re basically suffering through a dependency nightmare that isn’t worth maintaining.For stuff like that, I really wish that I could just scrap the immutability and simply install some more system-level packages like that more easily.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the reason I can’t simply layer the
wxGTK*libs and the RPM manually:espansorequires slightly different versions of the libs, and if I could simply symlink the newer versions that are available in the Silverblue repositories to the slightly older versions thatespansorequires, I could probably get it to work.bluefin co-maintainer here. espanso is a hard one, we have an open issue on getting it to work because it’d be something awesome to include. We might end up needing to package it but haven’t had a chance to look deeper into the issue.
You are an absolute king for this! I assumed it was too niche to have it included, but if you’re willing to consider bundling
espansoin the Bluefin image, I can look into trying to solve for this.Yeah it’s 2024, this stuff should just be built into the OS! I’m at kubecon so don’t have time to look into it now but it’d be an awesome thing to have, we’d love the help!
Didn’t know about espanso but I’ve actually searched for something like this a while back but found nothing. So thanks for mentioning it, definitely gonna give it a try.
Why doesn’t it work exported from a distrobox ?
I forget, to be honest. That was the first thing I tried but I did that weeks ago and have given up since then.
I want to say that it might have been the fact that I’d have to install and enable a GUI environment in the container, which would be, at best, odd, but at worst, buggy, since
espansowould be interacting with the GUI in the container environment, rather than my host.