It would be great if Distrobox could be available on Unraid. Ive heard some people have been able to install it.

@ich777 You've created many great plugins and have a lot of insight into what's possible on Unraid... what are your thoughts on the possibility of creating a distrobox plugin that (1) installs distrobox, and (2) helps manage installed distro images?

Sorry, I really can't help here since I don't know Distrobox.

But a installation should be possible I assume through a plugin.

@ich777 Got it! When you develop your plugins, do you have a test rig? Not sure the best way to test plugins on Unraid.

3 hours ago, PenTurDucKenLinE said:

@ich777 Got it! When you develop your plugins, do you have a test rig? Not sure the best way to test plugins on Unraid.

The easiest way is to run Unraid in a VM. The online documentation covers how to set this up. A key point is that you need a second licence to be used by the copy of Unraid running in the VM.

18 hours ago, PenTurDucKenLinE said:

@ich777 Got it! When you develop your plugins, do you have a test rig? Not sure the best way to test plugins on Unraid.

VM as @itimpi said and sometimes on my main machine too, I don't have a tutorial for that.

On 12/8/2025 at 6:06 PM, PenTurDucKenLinE said:

@ich777 You've created many great plugins and have a lot of insight into what's possible on Unraid... what are your thoughts on the possibility of creating a distrobox plugin that (1) installs distrobox, and (2) helps manage installed distro images?

It would be totally possible to have a distrobox plugin for unRAID, I know because i played around with it for a while back at v6.12.15. In terms of getting a distrobox package installed I was able to build a distrobox package for unraid using the slackbuild without any customization. Getting distrobox running was also simple though it required running mount --make-rshared / as described here. I used it for a while on unraid with only a few stability issues that I never pinned down to being related to distrobox (plenty of other customization on my system). I stopped using it because there wasnt really much i needed it for at the time. I do continue to make heavy use of distrobox on my desktop, where it forms the basis of my day to day environment.

On 10/3/2025 at 7:04 PM, PenTurDucKenLinE said:

It would be great if Distrobox could be available on Unraid. Ive heard some people have been able to install it.

So far as the feature request goes I really think that Limetech should consider integrating distrobox into the unRAID experience. I think it could solve what i consider to be an issue with the current unRAID ecosystem. Namely the number of newcomers and power users constantly looking for a way to install some package that they want to use from the command line. The answer since v6 was introduced has always been dont install things directly on unRAID, use a Docker or an LXC container or VM, to isolate them. I understand that the barrier for entry for those solutions can be high if the app they want isnt in the app store; and thats where distrobox could really help. With the right integrations the default command line environment for users could be containerized and running whatever distro the user is most comfortable with. People could install the CLI tools they want inside the containerized environment without affecting the unRAID host and the minimal isolation distrobox provides would allow them easy access to the system and their files without needing read to much into docker bind mounting.

@ich777 @itimpi @primeval_god Thank you to each of you for your responses! 😃

@primeval_god Do you think there's any chance some Unraid community members would be willing to collaborate on creating a Distrobox plugin? I can tinker around with testing stuff, but I'd have to use AI to actually build a plugin myself. I wonder whether Limetech would jump in if they saw enough people interested in it?

On 12/13/2025 at 2:25 PM, PenTurDucKenLinE said:

I wonder whether Limetech would jump in if they saw enough people interested in it?

I mean that is the point of posting in "Feature Requests", but i think it unlikely that there would be that much demand for it. Mostly because people will see it as added complexity for little benefit. As stated above the biggest benefit I see to adding distrobox to unRAID is to try and corral people into using the recommended environment/workflow on unRAID. No need to keep telling people to "do it in a container" if they are already in a container.

On 12/13/2025 at 2:25 PM, PenTurDucKenLinE said:

Do you think there's any chance some Unraid community members would be willing to collaborate on creating a Distrobox plugin? I can tinker around with testing stuff, but I'd have to use AI to actually build a plugin myself.

Possibly, a basic plugin could be fairly simple to develop and there are a good number of talented and friendly developers here. That said its a bit of a hard sell as you are more or less asking them to do all the dev work and offering to help with testing.

Edited December 15, 2025Dec 15 by primeval_god