Conty

This is an easy to use compressed unprivileged Linux container packed into a single executable that works on most Linux distros. It is designed to be as simple and user-friendly as possible. You can use it to run any applications, including games (Vulkan and OpenGL).

In its default configuration it includes, among others, these apps: Wine-GE, Steam, Lutris, PlayOnLinux, GameHub, Minigalaxy, Legendary, Bottles, MultiMC, MangoHud, Gamescope, RetroArch, PPSSPP, PCSX2, DuckStation, OBS Studio, OpenJDK, Firefox. If these applications are not enough, you can install additional applications or run external binaries from, for example, your home directory.

Besides, Conty supports true filesystem and X11 sandboxing, so you can even use it to isolate applications.

Features

• A single executable - download (or create) and run, nothing else is required. And it's portable, you can put it anywhere (even on a usb stick).
• Works on most Linux distros, even very old ones and even without glibc (such as Alpine or Void with musl).
• Works on Steam Deck.
• Root rights are not required.
• Compressed (with squashfs or dwarfs), so it takes a lot less disk space than uncompressed containers and may provide faster filesystem access in some cases.
• Contains many libraries and packages so it can run almost everything. And you don't need to install anything on your main (host) system. You can even run 32-bit applications on pure 64-bit systems.
• Based on Arch Linux, contains latest software (including latest videodrivers).
• Almost completely seamless experience. All applications that you run with Conty read and store their configs in your HOME directory as if you weren't using the container at all.
• No performance overhead. Since it's just a container, there is virtually no performance overhead, thus all applications will run at full speed. Regarding memory usage, Conty uses a bit more memory due to compression and because applications from the the container can't share libraries with your system apps.
• Supports Xorg, Wayland and XWayland.
• Supports filesystem and X11 sandboxing (thanks to bubblewrap and xephyr).

Requirements

The only requirements are bash, fuse2 (or fuse3), tar, gzip and coreutils. And your /tmp directory should allow files execution (which it does by default on most distros).

Your Linux kernel must be at least version 4.4 and should support unprivileged user namespaces. On some Linux distros this feature is disabled by default and can be enabled with sysfs:

# sysctl kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1

Even if unprivileged user namespaces are not supported by your kernel, you can still use Conty if you have bubblewrap with the SUID bit installed on your system, in this case just tell Conty to use system-wide utils instead of the builtin ones.

$ export USE_SYS_UTILS=1
$ ./conty.sh command command_arguments

Usage

Either download a ready-to-use release from the releases page or create your own (the instructions are below). Make it executable (via chmod or other ways) before running.

$ chmod +x conty.sh
$ ./conty.sh [command] [command_arguments]

Chmod only need to be executed once (per file). Running Conty from a terminal emulator is not strictly required, if your file manager allows running executables, you can also run Conty from it in which case it will show its graphical interface.

The graphical interface

Conty contains Steam, Lutris, PlayOnLinux, Bottles, Wine-GE and many more.

$ ./conty.sh steam
$ ./conty.sh lutris
$ ./conty.sh playonlinux4
$ ./conty.sh bottles
$ ./conty.sh wine someapplication.exe

It has a builtin file manager (pcmanfm):

$ ./conty.sh pcmanfm

To check if hardware acceleration (OpenGL and Vulkan) works, you can use these tools:

$ ./conty.sh glxinfo -B
$ ./conty.sh glxgears
$ ./conty.sh vulkaninfo
$ ./conty.sh vkcube

You can even use Conty for compilation:

$ ./conty.sh gcc src.c
$ ./conty.sh git clone https://something.git
$ cd something && ./conty.sh ./configure
$ ./conty.sh make

There are many more integrated programs. You can list all of them with:

$ ./conty.sh ls /usr/bin

It is also possible to run binaries from your storage. For example, if you want to run an application that resides on your HOME, run something like:

$ ./conty.sh /home/username/SomeApplication/binaryfile

There are some other features, see the internal help for more information.

$ ./conty.sh --help

About Wine

Conty releases from the releases page include Wine-GE, and if you build your own Conty you will get Wine-Staging by default (but you can change that).

As for prefix management, it's the same as with any other Wine build, the container does not affect it. The default prefix is ~/.wine, but you can specify a custom prefix path with the WINEPREFIX environment variable.

DXVK and vkd3d-proton are not installed by default (unless they are already in your prefix), but can be easily installed, for example, via winetricks if you need them:

$ ./conty.sh winetricks dxvk vkd3d

As already mentioned in the Usage section, Windows applications can be launched like this:

$ ./conty.sh wine someapplication.exe

If you have new enough Linux kernel (5.16 or newer), it's a good idea to enable FSYNC to improve Wine performance:

$ WINEFSYNC=1 ./conty.sh wine someapplication.exe

Sandbox

Conty uses bubblewrap and thus supports filesystem sandboxing, X11 isolation is also supported (via Xephyr). By default sandbox is disabled and almost all directories and files on your system are available (visible and accessible) for the container.

Here are the environment variables that you can use to control the sandbox:

• SANDBOX - enables the sandbox feature itself. Isolates all user files and directories, creates a fake temporary home directory (in RAM), which is destroyed after closing the container.
• SANDBOX_LEVEL - controls the strictness of the sandbox. There are 3 available levels, the default is 1. Level 1 isolates all user files; Level 2 isolates all user files, disables dbus and hides all running processes; Level 3 does the same as the level 2, but additionally disables network access and isolates X11 server with Xephyr.
• DISABLE_NET - completely disables internet access.
• HOME_DIR - sets a custom home directory. If you set this, HOME inside the container will still appear as /home/username, but actually a custom directory will be used for it.

And launch arguments:

• --bind SRC DEST - binds (mounts) a file or directory to a destination, so it becomes visible inside the container. SRC is what you want to mount, DEST is where you want it to be mounted. This argument can be specified multiple times to mount multiple files/dirs.
• --ro-bind SRC DEST - same as above but mounts files/dirs as read-only.

Other bubblewrap arguments are supported too, read the bubblewrap help or manual for more information.

Note that when SANDBOX is enabled, none of user files are accessible or visible, for any application that you run in this mode your home directory will be seen as completely empty. If you want to allow access to some files or directories, use the aforementioned --bind or --ro-bind arguments.

Also note that --bind, --ro-bind, HOME_DIR and DISABLE_NET can be used even if SANDBOX is disabled.

Example:

$ export SANDBOX=1
$ export SANDBOX_LEVEL=2
$ ./conty.sh --bind ~/.steam ~/.steam --bind ~/.local/share/Steam ~/.local/share/Steam steam

Another example:

$ mkdir "/home/username/custom_home_dir"
$ export DISABLE_NET=1
$ export SANDBOX=1
$ export HOME_DIR="/home/username/custom_home_dir"
$ ./conty.sh lutris

If you just want a sandboxing functionality but don't need a container with a full-size Linux distro inside (which is what Conty mainly is), i recommend to take a look directly at these projects: bubblewrap and firejail. Sandboxing is a good additional feature of Conty, but is not its main purpose.

Known issues

• Nvidia users with the proprietary driver will experience graphics acceleration problems (probably graphical applications won't work at all) if their Nvidia kernel module version mismatches the version of the Nvidia libraries inside Conty. This applies only to the proprietary driver, Nouveau should work fine without any additional actions (of course, if your GPU is supported by it). AMD and Intel GPUs are not affected by this issue.

  For example, if the version of your Nvidia kernel module is 460.56 and the libraries inside the container are from 460.67 version, then graphics acceleration will not work.

  There are three solutions to this problem:

  • The first and the easiest solution is to use the NVIDIA_HANDLER feature of Conty, it will automatically download and pass the appropriate driver version into the container. It hasn't been widely tested yet, so i would appreciate if you leave a feedback about this feature here. Fuse3 is required for this feature. To enable this feature, run Conty like this:

    $ NVIDIA_HANDLER=1 ./conty.sh [command] [arguments]
    

  • The second solution is to install the same driver version as included inside Conty, which is usually the latest non-beta version. You can see the exact driver version in pkg_list.txt attached to each Conty release. Of course if your GPU is not supported by new drivers, this is not an option for you.
  • The third solution is to (re)build Conty and include the same driver version as installed on your system. Read the "How to create your own Conty executables" section below, you will need to edit the create-arch-bootstrap.sh script or use the enter-chroot.sh script to include a different driver version. For instance, if you want to include legacy 470xx or 390xx drivers, edit the create-arch-bootstrap.sh script and replace nvidia-utils and lib32-nvidia-utils with nvidia-470xx-utils and lib32-nvidia-470xx-utils (replace 470xx with 390xx if you need 390xx drivers) in the video_pkgs variable, and then build Conty following the instructions.

• Some Windows applications running under Wine complain about lack of free disk space. This is because under Conty root partition is seen as full and read-only, so some applications think that there is no free space, even though you might have plenty of space in your HOME. The solution is simple, just run winecfg, move to "Drives" tab and add your /home as an additional drive (for example, D:), and then install applications to that drive. More info here.

• AppImages do not work under Conty. This is because bubblewrap, which is used in Conty, does not allow SUID bit (for security reasons), which is needed to mount AppImages. The solution is to extract an AppImage application before running it with Conty. Some AppImages support --appimage-extract-and-run argument, which you can also use.

• Application may show errors (warnings) about locale, like "Unsupported locale setting" or "Locale not supported by C library". This happens because Conty has a limited set of generated locales inside it, and if your host system uses locale that is not available in Conty, applications may show such warnings. This is usually not a critical problem, most applications will continue to work without issues despite showing the errors. But if you want, you can create a Conty executable and include any locales you need.

How to update

There are three main ways to update Conty and get the latest packages, use whichever works best for you.

• First of all, you can simply download latest release from the releases page, i usually upload a new release about every month.
• You can use the self-update feature (./conty.sh -u) integrated into Conty, it will update all integrated packages and will rebuild the squashfs/dwarfs image. Read the internal help for more information about it.
• You can manually create a Conty executable with latest packages inside, read the "How to create your own Conty executables" section below.

How to create your own Conty executables

1. Obtain Arch Linux boostrap by using create-arch-bootstrap.sh. Before running it, you can edit the script if you want , for example, to include a different set of packages inside the container, or to include additional locales. Make sure you have enough free disk space, i recommend at least 10 GB of free space. Root rights are required for this step.

   # ./create-arch-bootstrap.sh
   

2. After that you can use enter-chroot.sh to chroot into the bootstrap and do some manual modifications (for instance, modify some files, install/remove packages, etc.). Root rights are needed for this step too. This is an optional step, which you can skip if you wish.

   # ./enter-chroot.sh
   

3. Now use create-conty.sh to create a SquashFS (or DwarFS) image and create a ready-to-use Conty executable. Root rights are not needed for this step. By default a SquashFS image with zstd compression (level 19) will be created, however, if you want, you can edit the script and enable DwarFS, select a different compression algorithm and/or compression level. If you enabled DwarFS in the script, make sure to change utils_size in conty-start.sh to the size of utils_dwarfs.tar.gz, this is important.

   $ ./create-conty.sh
   

For the sake of convenience, there are pre-compiled binaries (utils.tar.gz) of bwrap, squashfuse and dwarfs and their dependencies uploaded in this repo, create-conty.sh uses them by default. If you want, you can compile your own binaries by using create-utils.sh, it will compile all needed programs and create utils.tar.gz. If you are going to use your own utils.tar.gz, make sure to set corrent utils_size in conty-start.sh, according to the size of your utils.tar.gz.

Main used projects

• bubblewrap
• squashfuse
• dwarfs
• fuse-overlayfs
• archlinux
• chaotic-aur