As an alternative to maintaining multiple Toolbx containers for each command-line tool, you can use one Toolbx and install and manage your packages with Nix. This approach keeps your tools off the Fedora Silverblue host while letting Nix handle package installation and updates in a single Toolbx container.

As mentioned in previous posts, Toolbx gives Fedora Silverblue a mutable environment for installing command-line tools without layering them onto the host. A single container is enough to get started, but my preference is to create a separate Toolbx container for each tool I use regularly.

Fedora Silverblue is an immutable operating system, so I try to avoid layering packages onto the host unless they are needed by the system itself. For command-line tools, Toolbx provides a convenient alternative: it gives me a familiar Fedora environment with dnf, while keeping those packages outside the host image.

This post shows how to create a Toolbx container, install Neovim in it, and launch Neovim from the host with a small Zsh alias.

If you’re already using Fedora Silverblue, you’re likely comfortable with its container first workflow and the role Podman plays as the default runtime. But even in a Podman native environment, there are still cases where Docker compatibility matters — especially when working with tools that rely on Docker specific behavior.

How to manage your containerized applications as effortlessly as any other system service on Fedora Silverblue. Podman quadlets bridges the gap between containers and systemd by allowing you to define container configurations declaratively in simple unit files - enabling automatic lifecycle management, seamless restarts and optimal resource control turning containers into first class citizens of your system’s init process.