Distrobox

Distrobox runs another Linux distribution in a container that shares your home folder, display and sound. It's the right place for developer toolchains, software only packaged for Ubuntu or Arch, or anything you'd rather not install on the system itself.

The Software Center has a Distrobox page to create and manage containers. From a terminal:

distrobox create --name box --image fedora:44     # create a Fedora container
distrobox enter box                               # open a shell inside it

Inside the container you install packages with that distribution's own tool (sudo dnf install … in a Fedora box, sudo apt install … in an Ubuntu one). They stay in the container and don't touch your system.

To put an app from a container into your app launcher, run inside it:

distrobox-export --app <app-name>

Other images work too, for example --image ubuntu:24.04 or --image archlinux:latest. Containers run with podman, which RakuOS cleans up weekly.