Hi all :)
I manage a handful of websites and their emails using the PortableApps suite on Windows, so have a separate browser and mail client for each one. This has worked well for years, but now I’m switching to Linux, Mint specifically. I’ve read that I can set up profiles on Firefox and probably Thunderbird, or maybe run separate instances with things like AppImages, but it sounds like it’s a messy solution, and could end up with me using the wrong profile by mistake
What I want to do is set up a virtual machine for each site, and have a completely separate instance of the programs, and hopefully a way to easily transfer the machines to other systems if needs be.
I’d prefer to use a Debian / Ubuntu based distro with Apt and the ‘Windows’ style desktop, as that’s what I’m already used to, but am I better off installing Mint and stripping it down, or is there something more suited to this?
Thanks in advance :)
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Load up a live CD of your distro in your VM. Install a browser. Load up all your plugins, bookmarks, sites, when you have it completely how you want it, tarball your Firefox config folder to a USB drive.
The next time you want to use it, start the live CD again and untar the tarball back in your config directory. Anytime you want to update it, just remake the tarball.
It’s ephemeral, no logs are stored, you have almost no chance of accidentally loading the wrong thing.
Artix is light and systemd free. Some super lightweight distros are tiny core and antix
I like the look of these, thanks :)
I’ll have to skip Artix for this job, as I’m still relatively new to Linux, and can’t afford to be learning lots with this, but it’s definitely one I’m going to try out and play with :)
Peropesis maybe.
Have you looked onto Pop OS? It combines VMs and you can delegate specific apps to a specific VM.
I tend to use Debian for VM clients because essentially all blogs assume apt-get and I hate Ubuntu.
two popular choices for the container lifestyle are Debian Stable and Alpine (to the point it’s almost sacrilegious to run Alpine on the desktop)
Good choices, thanks :)
Alpine looks insane, with those low storage requirements. I need to try it out and see how I get on with the package manager though.
I use Alpine with Gnome 45. Works excellent for browsing web.
The package manager for Alpine is…so fast. The community (IRC/Gitlab) is responsive and helpful.
VM is plenty of overhead and your use-case doesn’t really require that. If you want to effectively isolate browsers and for some reason using Firefox profiles isn’t enough (for me that was perfectly fine to have private and job profiles and just launching them with additional parameter specifying which profile like
firefox -P workand I wrapped them in their dedicated .desktop files), learn about containers and Docker or Podman. You’ll get native performance, access to hardware acceleration and a native app window while also having the sandbox functionality. Plus, you’ll learn about containers, which opens a whole world of possibilitiesLinux Lite!
It’s based on Ubuntu and uses XFCE.
Resource wise how does this compare to Lubuntu which is also Ubuntu based with XFCE?
ISO wise it’s about 500MB smaller which is nice when I’m messing around with VMs.
That looks good, thanks. I use Xubuntu on my media server at the moment, so I’m used to XFCE too :)
install Debian the way you want up through the apps you need. Then it off and use it as a clone to copy for all your setups as needed.
That’s a good idea, thanks :)
I use arch for stuff like this myself
btw
Alpine is great for VM and containers… Light on resources because of musl.
The weakness of Alpine is that anything relying on glibc probably won’t work. Yes, I know there’s glibc simulation, but that’s far from perfect.
Very light-weight Debian.
Also: “NixOS’s declarative configuration allows you to define your entire system configuration, including software packages, services, and system settings, in a single configuration file.”
But now they have to learn nix…
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Alpine maybe ?
Alpine does seem to be the popular distro in the thread :)
I’m planning on trying it out tonight and seein g how I get on with the package manager, not that I should need it much after the initial installation.
I was gonna say that but does alpine have KDE or XFCE (he said Windows style interface)? I’ve only used it as a container.
They have a wiki page for installing KDE so I’m sure it supports XFCE also. You’ll want to download their virtual optimized version instead of mini root (which is what you normally use in a container).
Runs KDE and xfce fine.
You should look into how Docker works. It, or something like it, is probably the better tool for the job.
