Some Reading on Application Containers
Published on 10 Jan 2017 · Filed in Information · 182 words (estimated 1 minutes to read)One aspect of my pending migration to Ubuntu Linux on my primary laptop has been the opportunity to explore “non-traditional” uses for Linux containers. In particular, the idea of using Docker (or systemd-nspawn or rkt) to serve as a sandbox (of sorts) for GUI applications really intrigues me. This isn’t a use case that many of the container mechanisms are aiming to solve, but it’s an interesting use case nevertheless (to me, anyway).
So, in no particular order, here are a few articles I found about using Linux containers as application containers/sandboxes (mostly focused around GUI applications):
A Docker-Like Container Management using systemd
Running containers without Docker
Containerizing Graphical Applications on Linux with systemd-nspawn
Debian Containers with systemd-nspawn
Using your own containers with systemd-nspawn and overlayfs
Using systemd-nspawn for some containerization needs
I was successful in using Docker to containerize Firefox (see my “dockerfiles” repository on GitHub), and was also successful in using systemd-nspawn in the same way, including the use of overlayfs. My experiments have been quite helpful and informative; I have some ideas that may percolate into future blog posts.