

Discussion summary
Podman 6.0.0 is used mainly for local development and isolated sandboxes, with some users integrating compose and WSL. Opinions vary on its platform limitations and compatibility with orchestration tools.
What the discussion says
- Some users prefer Podman for local dev and sandbox environments.
- Concerns about platform dependency and file ownership issues persist.
- Compatibility with compose and orchestration tools is generally adequate.
“Podman is fine for regular dev work, but not for orchestration.”
“Podman can run compose, either its own or docker-compose.”
Comments
Hacker News
But the beauty of compose is the same as the beauty of the Dockerfile. Portability, reproducibility (mostly), and a single readable file with all the relevant parts. It means a developer can use the same compose file locally that's used for deployment.
How do people actually work with podman? Do you work with a team? How do you setup a local development stack the way you would with compose?
by LinXitoW
Not a big deal if you are developing server software, as most servers nowadays are Linux.
by pezezin
by notnullorvoid
For personal stuff, I've been experimenting with podman's Kubernetes files: https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-kube.1.html. Which, IMO, "feel" like docker-compose the most. You can run services via "podman kube play ..." and install them via quadlet install too.
by mikebelanger
Once the pod is defined you can use ‘podman pod up/down’ to interact with it, but mostly we encourage people to use the Just recipes to do the things.
The thing is, podman has docker-compose like management built in, in the form of pods, but it doesn’t seem to be very well socialized.
On the server we use quartet+systemd and it’s great. Never had an issue with that part.
by yoyohello13
I use Podman on both macos and Windows, with compose files, so I'm a bit perplexed by this whole comment.
by mattdw
by lorbus
by audidude
- What's Docker?
- wow Docker is so convenient
- hmmm all that convenience is creating new problems
- is Docker really open?
- What's Podman?
- Ugh Podman is a great idea but does not work
- Is Podman working better now?
- ... kinda, just for testing on my machine
- wow... Podman works just as well as Docker in 99.99% of my cases
... so yes except for the last .01% (e.g. rather niche https://github.com/containers/podman-compose/issues/792 ) is now my default container engine.
by utopiah
by alessandroberna
by jdoe1337halo
by tsoukase
you can set it up with qemu-user-static for --platform linux/amd64; i don't remember which i exactly used, or if official docs have been updated for it but looked something like [1]
there is one sneaky bug in qemu that breaks uv [2] for cross-platform targets so i keep having to fall back to lima for that, but great otherwise.
[1]: https://www.itix.fr/blog/qemu-user-static-with-podman/ [2]: https://github.com/astral-sh/uv/issues/16024 , https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/work_items/3130 [3]: https://lima-vm.io/
by thewisenerd
by Hendrikto
no "container root" / "docker group" = "host root" shenanigans
podman doesn't spew garbage and punch holes in my firewall (iptables)
(edit: formatting)
by buredoranna
The way Docker silently rewrites iptables rules is just insane. It boggles my mind that someone thought that it would be a good idea, and that it survived a peer review.
by drnick1
I had issues like when Podman randomly stopped responding and I had to "kill" the podman machine more than once or some container randomly built differently or failed (due to architecture diff).
This was not the case with Orbstack, but they are license-only, closed source and macOS only oriented.
I wish I could find a consistently good container management system that is multiplatform, ideally open source as well.
Having said this, I think I will try Podman (6.0) again, in macOS :)
by victor_vhv
If I build an image with podman will it run in cri-o, docker and other misc runtimes?
Been debating on using rootless podman for building images since docker build requires sudo and it gets annoying with agentic workflows.
by himata4113
by a_t48
by mjburgess
by whalesalad
by dmitris
by zdragnar
by cheema33
by EddieB
by satvikpendem
by threecheese
by chrysoprace
by Tepix
by jimmar
Join the discussion
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- Hacker News
- I don't understand how podman can be used for serious development work. Sure, if you want to be bound to one single platform (linux), and create a bunch of individual files, you can sort of get something a little bit like compose.
But the beauty of compose is the same as the beauty of the Dockerfile. Portability, reproducibility (mostly), and a single readable file with all the relevant parts. It means a developer can use the same compose file locally that's used for deployment.
How do people actually work with podman? Do you work with a team? How do you setup a local development stack the way you would with compose?
by LinXitoW - > Sure, if you want to be bound to one single platform (linux)
Not a big deal if you are developing server software, as most servers nowadays are Linux.
by pezezin - I run podman for local dev containers or for isolated sandboxes mostly. Anything needing orchestration and I go straight to k8s, never liked docker compose.by notnullorvoid
- podman-compose is "mostly" compatible. I "plain" podman at work, but there we just have a bunch of shell scripts that spin up/down/build containers. For regular dev work, it's fine.
For personal stuff, I've been experimenting with podman's Kubernetes files: https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-kube.1.html. Which, IMO, "feel" like docker-compose the most. You can run services via "podman kube play ..." and install them via quadlet install too.
by mikebelanger - We have a consistent wsl image for everyone. So they are all on Linux. Then we have a podman pod defined in a bash script. We have a Justfile where you can run ‘just services’ and it all “just works (tm)”.
Once the pod is defined you can use ‘podman pod up/down’ to interact with it, but mostly we encourage people to use the Just recipes to do the things.
The thing is, podman has docker-compose like management built in, in the form of pods, but it doesn’t seem to be very well socialized.
On the server we use quartet+systemd and it’s great. Never had an issue with that part.
by yoyohello13 - Podman can run compose - either its own, or docker-compose if you tell Podman to listen on the docker socket.
I use Podman on both macos and Windows, with compose files, so I'm a bit perplexed by this whole comment.
by mattdw - single-file quadlets goby lorbus
- Does it still completely screw up file/group owners in user containers? Because they keep saying it gets fixed and then that 1 out of 10 times it's not.by audidude
- How my mindset changed :
- What's Docker?
- wow Docker is so convenient
- hmmm all that convenience is creating new problems
- is Docker really open?
- What's Podman?
- Ugh Podman is a great idea but does not work
- Is Podman working better now?
- ... kinda, just for testing on my machine
- wow... Podman works just as well as Docker in 99.99% of my cases
... so yes except for the last .01% (e.g. rather niche https://github.com/containers/podman-compose/issues/792 ) is now my default container engine.
by utopiah - I love the naming of their new networking tools. Now there's pesto to go along with pastaby alessandroberna
- I'd love to switch to Podman but I use Coolify for all of my deployments and it is Docker based, so I am kind of locked into that ecosystem for nowby jdoe1337halo
- There is the podman-docker package that seamlessly emulates docker using podman. Eg for Arch Linux https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/podman-docker/by tsoukase
- podman's been great for me on macOS for testing stuff quick; which earlier used to need a whole limactl[3]/virt thing.
you can set it up with qemu-user-static for --platform linux/amd64; i don't remember which i exactly used, or if official docs have been updated for it but looked something like [1]
there is one sneaky bug in qemu that breaks uv [2] for cross-platform targets so i keep having to fall back to lima for that, but great otherwise.
[1]: https://www.itix.fr/blog/qemu-user-static-with-podman/ [2]: https://github.com/astral-sh/uv/issues/16024 , https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/work_items/3130 [3]: https://lima-vm.io/
by thewisenerd - It is a bit buried, but Podman now follows the UAPI Configuration Files Specification as well as the Base Directory Specification. This is great!by Hendrikto
- Top of my list as to why I prefer podman...
no "container root" / "docker group" = "host root" shenanigans
podman doesn't spew garbage and punch holes in my firewall (iptables)
(edit: formatting)
by buredoranna - > podman doesn't spew garbage and punch holes in my firewall (iptables)
The way Docker silently rewrites iptables rules is just insane. It boggles my mind that someone thought that it would be a good idea, and that it survived a peer review.
by drnick1 - I wanted to love Podman, but unfortunately, in my current employer's we have macOS machines.
I had issues like when Podman randomly stopped responding and I had to "kill" the podman machine more than once or some container randomly built differently or failed (due to architecture diff).
This was not the case with Orbstack, but they are license-only, closed source and macOS only oriented.
I wish I could find a consistently good container management system that is multiplatform, ideally open source as well.
Having said this, I think I will try Podman (6.0) again, in macOS :)
by victor_vhv - Does anyone have experience with using podman image builds for cri runtimes other than docker?
If I build an image with podman will it run in cri-o, docker and other misc runtimes?
Been debating on using rootless podman for building images since docker build requires sudo and it gets annoying with agentic workflows.
by himata4113 - If any Podman engineers are here: does the new /libpod/local/artifacts/add endpoint let me ingest individual layers? I have an alternative pull client that's currently a little hamstrung on Podman compared to docker+containerd, due to having to convert the entire image to tarball to ingest rather than only new layers.by a_t48
- Sanctuary! mercy from grey fontby mjburgess
- also serif. almost like half the stylesheet is missing.by whalesalad
- Shift-Cmd-R Reader Mode if on Macby dmitris
- You've come to the wrong website to complain about contrast issues, my friend.by zdragnar
- Agreed. My first thought after that page loaded was, "why is this page harder to read?"by cheema33
- I doubled down on Podman when moving to Fedora a couple years ago- couple small hiccups but mostly my shallow knowledge on SELinux and bind mounts. Big fan, especially quadlets + stow on my homelab- thanks Podman people!by EddieB
- How is Podman these days? I use OrbStack on macOS and it seems to be much faster, not sure how everything will shake out now that macOS 27 is adding (more) native and performant Linux containers, similar to WSL with micro-VMs.by satvikpendem
- Same question, same scenario. I tried it on MacOS, and the first issue I experienced (don’t recall what it was) had me deep into Redhat forums to even understand what was happening. Switching to OrbStack was a no-brainer, but there are obvious tradeoffs from a features perspective.by threecheese
- I'm not sure about macOS, but it is seamless on Linux for my use cases. One thing to note is that Podman Compose defaults to docker-compose as the provider, and I haven't used the podman-compose provider (confusingly named slightly different to Podman Compose, which is the top level abstraction on top of docker-compose or podman-compose). You can still run containers through the Docker engine with Podman, if you need to.by chrysoprace
- I like Podman, but what's up with that grey text colour? It looks ugly and the contrast of 4.96:1 makes it hard to read (does not reach WCAG AAA level).by Tepix
- Quadlets and rootless containers are two major reasons I'll be switching from Docker to Podman.by jimmar
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