JuNest

The lightweight Arch Linux based distro that runs upon any Linux distros without root access.

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Description

JuNest (Jailed User NEST) is a lightweight Arch Linux based distribution that allows to have an isolated GNU/Linux environment inside any generic host GNU/Linux OS and without the need to have root privileges for installing packages.

JuNest contains mainly the package managers (called pacman and a simple yaourt wrapper called yogurt) that allows to access to a wide range of packages from the Arch Linux repositories.

The main advantages on using JuNest are:

Install packages without root privileges.

Partial isolated environment which you can install packages without affecting a production system.

Access to a wide range of packages in particular on GNU/Linux distros that may contain limited repositories (such as CentOS and RedHat).

Available for x86_64, x86 (deprecating) and ARM architectures but you can build your own image from scratch too!

Run on a different architecture from the host OS via QEMU

All Arch Linux lovers can have their favourite distro everywhere!

JuNest follows the Arch Linux philosophy.

How different is JuNest from Docker and Vagrant?

Although JuNest sounds similar to a virtualisation/Linux container -like system, JuNest differentiate a lot between Docker and Vagrant. In fact, the purpose of JuNest is not to build a complete isolated environment but, conversely, is the ability to run programs as they were running natively from the host OS. Almost everything is shared between host OS and the JuNest sandbox (kernel, process subtree, network, mounting, etc) and only the root filesystem gets isolated (as the programs installed in JuNest need to reside elsewhere).

This allows interaction between processes belonging to both host OS and JuNest. For instance, you can install top command in JuNest in order to monitor any processes belonging to the host OS.

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