Looking for a minimal distro for a virtual machine

Hi all :)

I manage a handful of websites and their emails using the PortableApps suite on Windows, so have a separate browser and mail client for each one. This has worked well for years, but now I’m switching to Linux, Mint specifically. I’ve read that I can set up profiles on Firefox and probably Thunderbird, or maybe run separate instances with things like AppImages, but it sounds like it’s a messy solution, and could end up with me using the wrong profile by mistake

What I want to do is set up a virtual machine for each site, and have a completely separate instance of the programs, and hopefully a way to easily transfer the machines to other systems if needs be.

I’d prefer to use a Debian / Ubuntu based distro with Apt and the ‘Windows’ style desktop, as that’s what I’m already used to, but am I better off installing Mint and stripping it down, or is there something more suited to this?

Thanks in advance :)

onlinepersona,

distrobox.it

azvasKvklenko,

VM is plenty of overhead and your use-case doesn’t really require that. If you want to effectively isolate browsers and for some reason using Firefox profiles isn’t enough (for me that was perfectly fine to have private and job profiles and just launching them with additional parameter specifying which profile like firefox -P work and I wrapped them in their dedicated .desktop files), learn about containers and Docker or Podman. You’ll get native performance, access to hardware acceleration and a native app window while also having the sandbox functionality. Plus, you’ll learn about containers, which opens a whole world of possibilities

Tippon,

Thanks for replying :)

I’m trying to learn how to use Docker at the moment, but not getting very far. I may be able to use it for this in the future, but for now I need to stick with what I know :)

LeFantome,

antixlinux.com/about/

Very light-weight Debian.

Tippon,

I’ll give it a look, thanks :)

kaputter_Aimbot,

Ever considered DietPi?!

DietPi is an extremely lightweight Debian OS, highly optimised for minimal CPU and RAM resource usage […]

You can install either LXDE, LXQt, MATE, Xfce or GNUstep as a desktop. Maybe Chromium in Kiosk mode could be suitable for you too?!

They provide ready-to-go images for a bunch of different hypervisors.

Tippon,

I hadn’t considered it, I thought it was just for SBCs.

I’ll give it a try in a VM, thanks :)

bionicjoey,

You should look into how Docker works. It, or something like it, is probably the better tool for the job.

Tippon,

At the moment, Docker is frying my brain >.<

I’m trying it out with a handful of programs, and I’m struggling so far. Too many of the guides assume that you already have a certain level of Docker knowledge, and can be very confusing. It’s something that I’m going to have to look at in the future :)

BananaTrifleViolin, (edited )

If you’re running Linux you could just have different logins to either your main desktop or within one VM running linux.

Each user login would have their own separate home directory, own profiles for Firefox and Thunderbird, or any other tools you use. But at the same time all apps you’d install would still be available to all accounts and kept secure and up to date with the VMs system updates.

As you’re using mint as your main desktop and if you’re not very familiar with linux, I’d just run Mint within a Virtualbox VM, probably XFCE edition of mint. That way techniques you use in your main desktop work the same in the your VM, albeit with a slightly different interface with XFCE. Once you’re more familiar with Linux you could look at other techniques? If you’re familiar with Linux then KVM would be an alternate route for virtualisation, albeit very similar in this scenario.

There are methods to run portable apps in Linux (such as Appimage) but the real key is keeping profiles separate. You could also do all this by having separate Firefox and Thunderbird profiles and set up links to run the software with the specific profile you want. Again this could be done with a VM if you want to contain all this in one place, or on your main desktop (either in your Linux profile or a dedicated work profile to separate it out more cleanly from your personal files). You’d get less overhead via this route in terms of hard drive space an RAM/CPU usage. You’d literally just have separate shortcuts like “Website 1” which runs the command “thunderbird -P /path/to/website1/thunderbird/profile”.

mojo_raisin,

If you’re running Linux you could just have different logins to either your main desktop

This is what I’d recommend, use different themes, color schemes, and/or the customer’s logo so they all look very different. This is what I do to separate my business from personal stuff.

z00s,

+1 👍

Tippon,

Thanks for the detailed reply :)

I’ve tried setting up a separate profile on my laptop for the main site that I manage, but I’m finding the permissions to be difficult. I need to transfer files from my existing profile to the new website profile, but I keep getting all sorts of errors telling me that I’m not allowed, even if I put the users in the same group and give the group read and write access, or if I try changing ownership to the website user.

I’ve probably set up something wrong with the new user, but it made me think about other ways of doing it, and how to back it up. I’m probably going with a VM so that as well as a regular backup, I can back up the whole VM and store a copy on other physical computers. If something goes wrong, like my laptop getting stolen, I can just fire up the VM on another computer and keep working.

@mojo_raisin had a good idea though, of using different themes and the logo to help differentiate them. I think I’ll use that whichever way I go.

XFCE is a good idea, thanks. I use Xubuntu on my media server at the moment, so I’m used to the way that it works. I like the look of KVM too. Apparently it’s faster than VirtualBox, and that’s usually fine for my needs, so it should be good :)

Having different Firefox and Thunderbird profiles under the same login is something that I’m definitely avoiding. I’ve tried things like that in the past, and have trouble keeping them separated. I have some memory issues, probably related to ADHD, and find it too easy to open the wrong copy of a program when I’m focused on something else.

mojo_raisin,

Ya, this isn’t an easy problem to solve. I have some of the same issues.

If you want to try again or keep trying with the shared directory model try the “sticky bit” along with ACL.

sudo setfacl -d -m g:shared:rwx /path/to/shared_directory

This will make any files/directories you create in the shared dir have the right permissions to share. But it doesn’t apply to files already existing in the directory or files/directories created outside of this directory that are moved into the directory.

If you go the VM route, you might look into QEMU + KVM using .qcow2 files for the VM disk. Then you could just copy the qcow around and start the VM with a command (albeit a complex command). If this sounds interestiing, let me know and I can provide help and examples of how I do it or explanations.

prunerye,

How important is the Windows-style desktop? If the VM is designed for one thing and one thing only, I’d pick any minimal WM that can alt-tab, say JWM, and then just add Firefox and Thunderbird to the autostart file.

Tippon,

Ironically, JWM is the reason I don’t use distros like Puupy os DSL. For some reason, I just can’t get on with it. I don’t know if it’s muscle memory or something, but I just can’t get to grips with it.

Saying that though, it’s always worth another shot. As you suggest, I should only need the two programs, and maybe something lime FileZilla, so starting them at boot should help too :)

coindetable,

Alpine maybe ?

ShittyBeatlesFCPres,

I was gonna say that but does alpine have KDE or XFCE (he said Windows style interface)? I’ve only used it as a container.

BrianTheeBiscuiteer,

They have a wiki page for installing KDE so I’m sure it supports XFCE also. You’ll want to download their virtual optimized version instead of mini root (which is what you normally use in a container).

billgamesh,

Runs KDE and xfce fine.

Tippon,

Alpine does seem to be the popular distro in the thread :)

I’m planning on trying it out tonight and seein g how I get on with the package manager, not that I should need it much after the initial installation.

bizdelnick,

You can create a shortcut for each firefox profile. This won’t give you an isolation like VM or container but similar to portable apps while consume less RAM.

Tippon,

Thanks for the suggestion :)

Profiles are what I’m trying to avoid. I have memory issues, possibly linked to ADHD, so I need the isolation more than the RAM savings. If everything’s inside a container, I’ve got less chance of launching the wrong instance and screwing something up.

eveninghere,

Have you looked onto Pop OS? It combines VMs and you can delegate specific apps to a specific VM.

I tend to use Debian for VM clients because essentially all blogs assume apt-get and I hate Ubuntu.

Tippon,

I have, but I don’t like the WM. I’ll have another look at it though and see what it’s like with VMs :)

I tend to use Debian for VM clients because essentially all blogs assume apt-get and I hate Ubuntu.

This is why I usually use Mint :D

DavidGarcia,

Check out NixOS Containers

Also: “NixOS’s declarative configuration allows you to define your entire system configuration, including software packages, services, and system settings, in a single configuration file.”

nixos.org

mynixos.com

onlinepersona,

But now they have to learn nix…

Anti Commercial AI thingyCC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Tippon,

Thanks for the suggestion, but NixOS is a bit too complicated for what I need right now :)

NOOBMASTER,

Peropesis maybe.

Tippon,

Thanks for the suggestion :)

Shape4985,
@Shape4985@lemmy.ml avatar

Artix is light and systemd free. Some super lightweight distros are tiny core and antix

Tippon,

I like the look of these, thanks :)

I’ll have to skip Artix for this job, as I’m still relatively new to Linux, and can’t afford to be learning lots with this, but it’s definitely one I’m going to try out and play with :)

stewie3128,

Alpine is great for VM and containers… Light on resources because of musl.

eveninghere,

The weakness of Alpine is that anything relying on glibc probably won’t work. Yes, I know there’s glibc simulation, but that’s far from perfect.

Tippon,

It looks great, thanks :)

I’m nojt sure whether I’m going to use it for this, as I haven’t had a chance to try the package manager yet, but I’m definitely going to be giving it a test drive, even if it’s only to see what it can do with such low requirements :)

linearchaos,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

Load up a live CD of your distro in your VM. Install a browser. Load up all your plugins, bookmarks, sites, when you have it completely how you want it, tarball your Firefox config folder to a USB drive.

The next time you want to use it, start the live CD again and untar the tarball back in your config directory. Anytime you want to update it, just remake the tarball.

It’s ephemeral, no logs are stored, you have almost no chance of accidentally loading the wrong thing.

Tippon,

I like that idea, thanks :)

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