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.”
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- Hacker News
- 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
- I administrate my home lab using podman desktop and quadlets. It is one of the few GUIs for what is mostly a cli utility that really adds value.by bjoli
- Rootless was the reason I switched to Podman years ago. It's just so smooth and I don't have to worry about obscure permissions and services errors anymore.
- No idea why Docker is still so much more popular than Podman. Podman is obviously the better implementation.
The new network stuff is a welcome improvement.
by SwellJoe - Most people simply do not care. They just want a Dockerfile to become an image, and they want to run that image. I use both... rootless podman is nice. Although the promise of ez systemd integration is a bit... oversold. I use it with systemd however with my own hand-crafted unit files. Pretty good combo.by whalesalad
- Last time I evaluated podman, Ubuntu was second class citizen. Rootless was non trivial and required additional setup. Documentation also suck.
Docker is something we all already hate, milion edge cases and forever bugs but at least well documented and understood. Podman claim to be drop-in replacement does it mean it carry docker shitness? Examples: ufw punch through, env file handling, volumes, etc
by Chyzwar - Just today, I tried to run docker compose on a remote host via podman-docker on Fedora (Asahi). I ran into all sorts of buildx issues, and the easiest fix for me was to remove podman and install docker instead.
I tried working through it with Claude, but after a few failed attempts I gave up. I'd like to use podman, but the docker compose + buildx compatibility gaps made it more trouble than it was worth for now. I'm definitely going to try it again.
by tbocek - One advantage of Docker is reliable host-to-container file change notifications, allowing tools like Vite inside the container to detect changes. Podman and many alternatives don’t handle this well for our web development on macOS.
Not even Tart or Apple Container support it, as far as I know. Maybe someone has found a way.
by todotask2 - I think a stronger brand name. Also on macOS I found Docker Desktop to be more straightforward. Also lately it has been very error prone. Randomly failing at mounting files, or cleaning up networking rules, or suddenly becoming bog slow so I have to restart the VM.
Podman on macOS feels miles less refined. Orbstack is a way better choice.
I only use podman on Linux and there it is blazing fast. Even so, most features seem to be geared to be able to replace kubernetes in combination with systemd. And then something simple as docker compose support is flaky and it’s TUI/ux lags behind the original.
by spockz - Last time I checked podman compose was only a superficial docker compose equivalent. Also stuff like inotify seems to randomly break a lot on the podman side.
I'd love to be able to recommend people use podman but not having a good docker compose compatibility and missing inotify on volumes makes the DX just too problematic.
by theK - I gave up on Podman for some minor reasons: one was that they decided to deviate from Docker and handle SELinux differently, which required effort to change the SELinux security labels on a stock Centos system. That made it a no go.
The other issue is minor differences from Docker, but small enough that a packaged up Docker compose doesn’t work out of the box. It’s not a good use of my time to debug that when I could just switch to Docker, have it work, and get on with my day.
by trollbridge - I’d wager it’s mainly just that deployment is mildly more annoying and requires more disparate steps.
Especially if you want to go rootless (and you should).
For someone that isn’t “Linux first” (like a baby developer learning to containerize their apps), the idea of dealing with systemd unit files or kublet configs, and having to created dedicated local service accounts (and remembering to enable linger) is somewhat intimidating when compared to just installing docker, whipping up a docker compose file and pressing “start”.
I understand why they’ve taken this approach but it’s pretty clunky and a bit unfriendly.
by sudonem - Cool, been running my home server on podman + quadlets for about two years now and picked up a couple of things in the release notes
Added in v5.6.0, lists quadlets and their containerspodman quadlet list
Flag added in v5.8.0. I remember seeing the bolt db deprecation warnings in the past but there was no tool to do the migration to sqlite, now there is (or just upgrade to podman 6.0.0 and it will do it automatically)podman system migrate --migrate-dbby muti - Anyone have experience switching from Docker to Podman?
I have a lot of compose files in my homelab/automation setup and those are what I’m most concerned about.
by roger_ - I set up my stuff as all Podman when I moved from a VPS to my home server and it's been pretty simple. I didn't use any of the compose functionality because I have a single DBMS of each type and just have multiple DBs on them etc. and I use podman through the systemd quadlet system. Honestly, it's been pretty flawless.by arjie
- I've been coding solutions against each. I'm currently having issues extracting progress from the current Podman on my TUI build pane, but now switching versions to see if it addresses it and continue working the issue.
I have zero issues with it doing the builds I need. Works same same as Docker from what I can tell.
I took Docker completely off my Macbook which has a tiny drive in it. Hardly ever use it, except for testing. Podman is super lightweight and using a project I'm developing, launches containers with dev agents in it, just the same as Windows running Docker.
- I moved in 2021.
Others have pointed out that you can use podman-compose or docker-compose pointed at podman. I did something different: I switched to using systemd to manage all my containers. It was worthwhile as I can just use my usual systemctl and journalctl utilities for both containerized and non-containerized services rather than having to remember two sets of commands.
I only experienced one minor issue with pasta (used by podman) with networking, but by then I had fully committed to podman so I did not even try to see whether I would have had this same issue if I were using docker.
by kccqzy - I have switched on production and QA servers. I used AI tools to help with the migration. Easy peasy. On the desktop, I am still using docker. Old habits die hard. Eventually I plan to switch on the desktop as well.by cheema33
- I switched everything over to rootless podman a year or two back. Some containers ended up with permissions issues when trying to read their old data - caused by being run with a different UID. This was really the only problem I ran into, but I would have had the same issue switching from rootful docker to rootless docker.
Absolutely zero regrets, would never go back.
by ekuck - Swapped a few years back (pre 5.0), haven't looked back. For compose files I'd look into using quadlets.
For quick conversions you can use compose files directly with podman-compose or docker compose pointed at the podman socket[0].
There's also podlet[1] which converts compose files into native quadlets. It does a pretty good job of taking care of everything for you and for a lot of simple to medium complexity compose files it will Just Work. There's talk of making it into a library of some kind so other tools can transparently convert compose files to quadlets so hopefully we'll see more stuff like it.
Otherwise, writing your own Quadlet files isn't too hard if you're at all familiar with systemd unit files. Most `docker run` or `podman run` arguments have direct quadlet conversions so once you get used to the INI format versus yaml it's pretty easy to see a compose file and churn out the equivalent quadlet(s).
by stryan