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.

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.

Because they don't publish up to date packages for major distros.

We need to popularize a "podman btw" meme based on the arch meme.

So any time people talk about docker someone can go:

I use podman btw

We moved from docker to podman about 15 months ago, and I'm never going back. I (personally) love the quadlet (read: systemd) integration, that makes it so much easier to monitor a set of running services, be they regular systemd services or containers. Running rootless is as straightforward as it gets and on top of it, podman is blazingly fast. I, personally, don't miss docker compose all that much, but I understand if the lack of docker compose is a showstopper for others. I've never tried podman's compose plugin.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Check again? I don't have any issues like this and use podman compose in prod.

I like OrbStack for macOS, much faster.

You can use actual docker-compose with podman, the -compose projects are separate from podman/docker.

podman-compose never worked well for me but docker-compose on podman did.

Yeah, it doesn't work with Apple Containers.

Works with OrbStack though.

Thats a use-case I never tried but seems valid. Is it a common issue on macOS?

> have it work, and get on with my day.

And usability continues for being security’s number one enemy...

> don’t handle this well for our web development on macOS

In general this seems to be a common complaint here. If you're developing with cloud runners or on linux infra you won't run into this, but on macOS for local development it is impactful.

> on a stock Centos system

Either an old experience you had, or a newer experience you had on vastly out of date packages and probably podman itself?

With recent advances in both systemd and podman a lot of this is basically a non-issue.

Documentation has also gotten better.

For tools that require docker to work, like testcontainers and tilt, I've found some annoyances using podman, but ultimately I've been able to work around them.

For everything else, it's pretty much a drop in replacement.

I switched from a giant docker compose file to podman quadlets on my homelab. IIRC it look me a little while to translate the first couple of services because there wasn't (at the time, at least) as much documentation/examples of quadlets as compose files, but after that it was a piece of cake. I highly recommend them.

The only issue I have is validation, there isn't a convenient built-in command to validate quadlet files and systemd doesn't warn you if any fail to generate. You either have to do a --dry-run first (and probably alias the full command to something reasonable) or check the journal for errors.

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).

[0] https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/podman-docker-compose

[1] https://github.com/containers/podlet

Yeah pretty much no big issues in moving over. Even ctop works for which I really wish there was a replacement since it's not updated anymore.

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.

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.

Would be great to know if I can uninstall docker on Mac and just install https://github.com/containers/podman/releases and be good to go with my docker compose files ?!

I have the feeling the docker company is communicating a lot with Apple because virtualisation got better and better over the years. I wonder if podman would be a speed downgrade here?

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.

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.

Agreed. My first thought after that page loaded was, "why is this page harder to read?"

Shift-Cmd-R Reader Mode if on Mac

also serif. almost like half the stylesheet is missing.

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/

Can you elaborate on SELinux? It affected me too but I just had to add :Z to my mount argument. Curious about whether there's further impact I'm unaware of.

I switched a few years back and use Quadlets instead of compose now. Converting compose files to Quadlets is pretty mechanical once you get the hang of it.

Highly recommend Podman overall; there are some quirky edge cases, but for the most part it’s a smooth replacement for Docker.

If you don’t want to give up compose entirely, podman-compose exists. I just prefer Quadlets so I haven’t used it much myself.

You've come to the wrong website to complain about contrast issues, my friend.

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.

There were other problems although it’s been a few years so I’ve forgotten them. I think the container I had trouble with Ory Kratos. We did eventually get it to work but had to change the sample docker deployment a fair bit.

macOS had a seperate set of problems. I ended up just going with buildx and Colima on macOS. (We don’t use Docker Desktop.)

Long term I’d like to try to switch to podman again, but it needs to have a “be 100% compatible with Docker” mode as opposed to this:

https://github.com/podman-container-tools/podman/issues/1478...

I ran into an issue I couldn't figure out how to solve with podman. Some of the testcontainers my test suites would run wouldn't start in time causing tests to fail locally. Switching back to docker desktop solved the problem.

This except in production. Nothing helped. I actually stopped using containers for a bit after that.