Silverblue IDE Support and the Challenges of Flatpaks

Ask Fedora
, , , , ,
1

I really like Silverblue but the IDE support seems rough. I’ve been using neovim inside of toolbox but I kind of just want to use VScode or Fleet but the flatpak versions of those aren’t as good when the sandboxing prevents installing formatters and other tools. Is there a better way to install these kind of apps or should I use workstation while atomic desktops continue maturing?

1 Like
2

Hi and welcome to Fedora!

You would also install the IDEs inside the toolbox. There is a VSCode Fedora repo, while I would recommend vscodium.

Their install guide also works on Fedora Atomic Desktops.

Note that the dnf system-upgrade plugin doesnt work inside a Toolbox/Distrobox. So you need to rebuild the box with the then latest version.

Also note that I would recommend Distrobox with this trick

3

Added atomic-desktops, toolbx, vscode and removed workstation

4

Added howto-candidate

5

I didn’t think toolbox was recommended for graphical apps, how do I add them to my application menu?

I’ve heard about Distrobox but I don’t really want to layer unnecessary packages if toolbox is the default

1 Like
6

Well, Distrobox supports many features that range from crucial to quality-of-life.

On Toolbox, I would like to just say “ask the devs” as I multiple times decided against using it, as it lacks all these features.

Adding the app entry is a mix of cp and sed.

cp /usr/share/applications/APPNAME.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/

sed -i 's/Exec=APPNAME/Exec=toolbox run --container BOXNAME APPNAME/g' ~/.local/share/applications/APPNAME.desktop

You may need to copy the icon too and change the icon path.

If you dont give the container a name, you can leave out the --container argument and use a simpler command.

sed -i 's/Exec=/Exec=toolbox run /g' ~/.local/share/applications/APPNAME.desktop

Distrobox is small. I have not measured it, but think that the speed difference between 0 layered apps and 1 layered app is the biggest. And then the others dont matter much.

1 Like
7

Thank you, I got it all down but I can’t find the icon in the toolbox, how do I link to it from the .Desktop file?

8

Yeah no idea. Often the entries just have Icon=appname and I dont know where to find them.

Maybe in /usr/share/icons somewhere.

Distrobox automates this.

1 Like
9

As much as I would want to love Toolbox, I’m a casual user and Distrobox seems to have more batteries included.

1 Like