Towel

A towel is just about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can carry.

A thin wrapper around Distrobox to keep your host clean while still running tools and apps as if they were locally installed.

What this project does

Towel installs a towel command and a predefined Distrobox container config for towel, based on Fedora toolbox. It adds a simple workflow for:

• creating/entering the container,
• installing packages with dnf inside the container,
• exporting app launchers/binaries back to the host via managed wrappers.

Quick start

1) Install towel

From this repo root:

./install

• Use ./install --yes in non-interactive scripts.
• The installer will:
  • copy towel files to ~/.local/share/towel
  • symlink ~/.local/bin/towel
  • copy distrobox/container config to ~/.config
  • install distrobox automatically if missing

2) Create the container

towel create

3) Enter it

towel enter

4) Install software

towel install <package>

By default it prompts whether to export installed apps/binaries to the host. Use towel install --yes <package> to auto-export.

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Common commands

towel                 # same as towel enter
towel create          # create container from ~/.config/distrobox/towel.ini
towel enter           # enter container shell
towel exec <cmd>      # run command inside container
towel install <pkg>   # dnf install inside container (+ optional export)
towel export <pkg>    # export already-installed package commands/apps
towel remove          # remove container and exported wrappers
towel update --check  # check for updates
towel update --apply  # install latest release

How export works

Exported integrations are managed by towel and placed under:

• internal wrappers: ~/.local/share/towel/exports/
• host-facing symlinks/apps:
  • ~/.local/bin/
  • ~/.local/share/applications/towel-*.desktop

Discovery is package-file based (dnf repoquery) and currently only exports:

• binaries in /usr/bin/*
• desktop entries in /usr/share/applications/*.desktop

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What applications work well in towel?

✅ Good fit

Apps/tools that are:

• regular RPM packages installed via dnf
• command-line tools with executables in /usr/bin
• desktop apps that ship standard .desktop launchers in /usr/share/applications
• user-space developer tooling (compilers, linters, formatters, language runtimes, editors)

These are the exact paths towel knows how to export cleanly.

⚠️ Usually awkward or unsupported

Apps that require behavior outside towel’s export/runtime model, for example:

• software that needs host-level system services (systemd units, daemons, kernel modules)
• packages whose main binaries are not in /usr/bin (for example only in /opt, custom paths, or generated at runtime)
• GUI apps without a standard .desktop launcher under /usr/share/applications
• apps needing privileged/root-style host integration beyond normal user-space container access

These can still run manually in some cases, but won’t be reliably auto-exported by towel export.

Notes

• towel remove is destructive and unexports managed wrappers first.
• The default container config lives at ~/.config/distrobox/towel.ini (copied from this repo during install).
• If towel isn’t found after install, restart your shell so ~/.local/bin is on PATH.