But day to day I’m in an ubuntu container and using “normal” package management, I just don’t do it on the host.
If you kept a basic minimal Ubuntu host it would be trivial to maintain. And you can still do your “toolbox” stuff on top of it. No weird immutable stuff needed.
I just don’t see the point. You want new users to understand containers. And to keep track of all the containers they maintain - possibly with different distros and using different things. And remember the difference between them and what is installed in each. Or just maintain one big container which is exactly what they would do normally anyway.
If you kept a basic minimal Ubuntu host it would be trivial to maintain. And you can still do your “toolbox” stuff on top of it. No weird immutable stuff needed.
I just don’t see the point. You want new users to understand containers. And to keep track of all the containers they maintain - possibly with different distros and using different things. And remember the difference between them and what is installed in each. Or just maintain one big container which is exactly what they would do normally anyway.
That’s not true for most people.
You don’t need to understand containers unless you’re using the system for development – which in Linux land means containers.