Run linux distro of choice inside existing distro

Question

Just wondering if it's possible and what the best route might be to run a full-on Linux distro within my existing distro? It would be great to for instance run Arch Linux within a chroot, jail, etc.. I believe people are doing this on Chromium for example.

I would require that whatever fs loaded, I can install packages using pacman and that my changes are kept intact.

I have tried the Virtualbox route by the way and there is a pretty nasty bug involving double mouse pointers on rotated host screens that I can't seem to get around.

I should mention that I'll be using this chroot environment for development, maybe running the odd X client to be exported remotely, etc..

Answer 1

I followed the chroot guide at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Change_Root and basically installed a whole Arch system within a nested chroot according to the Arch Linux installation guide and I'm now able to switch to the environment at will.

Answer 2

There is a tool https://github.com/fsquillace/junest that does everything automatically for you (downloads and unpacks ArchLinux distro inside some folder and chroots there).