Kapsule (distrobox-like?) newbie: few assumptions and questions (installing fish and Kapsule workings)

I’m checking out KDE Linux / Kapsule · GitLab to try to install fish. Does following sound correct:

  • Kapsule is KDE Linux distrobox variant, and preferred to use by default
  • Fish is a command line thing so it should be installed inside distrobox, and then exported so it’s accessible from “main terminal” - this is where i get confused a bit, since i don’t see distrobox-export equivalent?
  • and then when exported, i can find it with “which fish” and use it within a terminal?

I’ve used distrobox successfully in the past, but with exporting UI apps (VS Code). Something like fish shell is bit new to me.

Do containers auto-start when command linked is first invoked, or do they start on OS start? I’ve just realized that with VSCode, i’ve never had to worry about this, but had no idea how it works under the surface

While Kapsule is worked on, here’s how i got fish working:

distrobox create fish-box (gets default image, which is arch)

distrobox enter fish-box (enters the image)

sudo pacman -Syu fish (inside image, installs fish)

exit (leave image)

distrobox enter fishbox – distrobox-export --bin /usr/bin/fish --export-path ~/.local/bin (i picked this path because user folder is safe to write in immutable distros, not 100% sure if best one)

which fish (confirms where fish is exported)

at this point, you can add fish with that path to your terminal!

(didn’t mark above as solution because fish isn’t working perfectly, so i’m still troubleshooting if this is the way. currently it seems that maybe default paths need to be set/updated)

Currently I’m using fish from homebrew and it’s working fine

Ag thank you, didn’t think about brew. I think brew was breaking stuff and that was fixed recently. Will check it out

Homebrew wasn’t fixed, but its use isn’t recommended anymore. So probably don’t rely on it to heavily.

Personally I found nix the most convenient option for installing CLI tools, but of course nix has that initial learning curve.

I installed fish from nix and it works perfectly

How is this related to Kdenlive? Can you please remove the kdenlive tag? Thanks!

1 Like

Interesting, I didn’t think of Nix outside NixOS, but this might be good excuse to learn it. Is Nix able to do deep integration with immutable OS?

update: tried nix and fish works! new to nix but there were just enough first time docs in wiki that i was able to get it going