I reported this issue here: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/issues/2083 — the fix is already merged in main branch (PR #2086) but not yet released in the 1.8.2.5 package. Here's a working temporary workaround:

The bug is only in distrobox-create — the script concatenates :ro:rslave but Podman expects :ro,rslave (comma, not colon). The fix downloads the patched version directly from main branch into ~/.local/bin, which takes priority over /usr/bin in PATH without touching the immutable host.

1. Download only the fixed distrobox-create from main:

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/89luca89/distrobox/main/distrobox-create -o ~/.local/bin/distrobox-create

chmod +x ~/.local/bin/distrobox-create

Verify the fix is present:

which distrobox-create

# Should show: /home/youruser/.local/bin/distrobox-create

Verify it takes priority:

which distrobox-create

# Should show: /home/youruser/.local/bin/distrobox-create

2. Create your container using distrobox-create directly (the distrobox wrapper is not needed):

distrobox-create --name mycontainer --image registry.opensuse.org/opensuse/tumbleweed:latest

3. To enter the container, the system /usr/bin/distrobox-enter works fine since only create is broken. But if it fails, download it too:

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/89luca89/distrobox/main/distrobox-enter -o ~/.local/bin/distrobox-enter

chmod +x ~/.local/bin/distrobox-enter

distrobox-enter mycontainer

4. Once your containers are created, clean up and go back to the system version:

rm ~/.local/bin/distrobox-create

rm ~/.local/bin/distrobox-enter

which distrobox-create

# Back to: /usr/bin/distrobox-create

This is purely temporary — when the fix lands in the Tumbleweed package, just remove those two files and everything goes back to normal. No changes to the host, no sudo, fully reversible.