Introduction
X11Docker is a nice command line tool that allows you to run graphical
applications inside podman or docker by passing them to xpra or your wayland
socket. To do this you first need a Containerfile or Dockerfile to build an
image with the application you want to run. In this example I'm going to run
telegram-desktop.
Building a Container Image
FROM ubuntu:latest
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y telegram-desktop
CMD ["telegram-desktop"]Running the Application with X11Docker
We build this image with podman build . -t telegram and wait for it to
install our packages. When it's done we can simply run it with `x11docker
localhost/telegram` and it starts Telegram in Xpra.
Running with Wayland
If we wanted to start it under Wayland instead, we could run `x11docker
--wayland localhost/telegram` however the package for Telegram on Ubuntu
doesn't seem to have support for Wayland when I tried it.
This should work for any graphical software, even that which isn't in the
repositories. You can even install more than one piece of software in a single
image. Then you pass the CMD as an argument to x11docker like so `x11docker
localhost/telegram telegram-desktop`.