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Podman Desktop: Same functionality as Docker Desktop but open source (podman-desktop.io)
123 points by twelvenmonkeys on March 24, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 36 comments



Podman Desktop: A Free OSS Alternative to Docker Desktop - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33536978 - Nov 2022 (191 comments)

Podman Desktop Companion GUI – Parity on All Major Operating Systems - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31055475 - April 2022 (113 comments)


The Podman in Action ebook by Manning is currently free courtesy of RedHat: https://developers.redhat.com/e-books/podman-action


Requires an account to download the PDF.



The account is free, but this link will work for the next 4 hours. https://access.cdn.redhat.com/developers/Podman-in-Action-eb...


Seems to not be working already.



After opening it, the first thing it does is to offer to opt-out of telemetry. That's good enough.

That said, after I denied it, when I go to Settings it says Telemetry: Enabled, even though the checkbox to enable it is unchecked. I have no idea which reflects my current settings.

Furthermore, after I selected to "Initialize Podman", the switcher is still in the "off" position. If I click it again, it says the VM already exists. I'm not sure how to stop it, or if it's even actually running.

I'll stick with colima [0] for now as it's simple, easy, with not telemetry, and I always know what's its state.

[0] https://github.com/abiosoft/colima


Not really. I wouldn’t even say I’m doing anything hugely fancy with Docker (hell, I’m not even using containers in production) and podman desktop as it stands is unfortunately not a drop-in replacement. I pray for the day.


How does this compare to [Rancher Desktop](https://rancherdesktop.io/)? (Disclaimer: I’ve tried neither but would like to eventually evaluate both)


Ive used rancher desktop on macos, works great to replace docker desktop. I dont to complex things, eg. build a container to run a trino db client indtead of installing java locally.


I'll try this to see if it's more stable on Windows than Docker Desktop, which has been giving me constant issues lately. Or maybe it's WSL's fault, who knows.


Last time I tested it on wsl2 it didn't mount volumes in the main Linux distribution but only inside it's own Linux distro which kinda defeats the purpose since i couldn't use the storage accessible by the Linux distro that had all my tools setup. Not sure if that changed, but docker desktop has this functionality and works quite well.


I'm curious about what sort of work requires both windows and docker


In a previous life, I built and maintained a Dockerized CI pipeline (using Windows containers) for Bluetooth headphone firmware. Qualcomm only provides tools for e.g. CSR8675 platforms for Windows.

What’s worse is in some cases the source code has to be commingled with the SDK itself, so building projects can mean copying your source code and modifications over top of the installed SDK in order to produce a build. Docker’s ephemeral disks are a lifesaver in stupid situations like this.


Building windows client applications that need to talk to a containerized service. The service could run on a remote server, but for development it is convenient to run it on the same Windows laptop that I'm doing the Windows development on. I've already switched to podman on Windows, and I'm evaluating switching to podman on Linux for the sake of being a lighter weight, and looking like a good way to run pods on a single node.


If you work in a corporate environment the OS you use is dictated by IT policy.


Still no compose support?


Looks like there is compose support - https://podman-desktop.io/docs/compose/podman-compose


FWIW podman (sans desktop) works perfectly fine as a native back end for docker-compose as of podman v3, you just need to set the DOCKER_HOST env var.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Podman#Docker_Compose

podman-compose is less interesting since.


I'm not sure why the docs mention podman-compose, which is buggy and unmaintained.

The podman way is to write a k8s manifest and start it with `podman play kube`. Also handles configMaps and persistentVolumes.

If you really need docker-compose, podman is API-compatible with docker, so you can use the real thing on top of the podman socket.

Just do not use podman-compose.


Ok, this one is “interesting”: podman-compose have a dev brach that has some lots of things addressed, but they don’t have any recent tags and it’s not clear if they are going too. There is an issue somewhere, alluding that development is stalled because k8s is the way or similar thing.

Debian recently packaged 1.0.3 that is also old.


See sibling comment. You can use docker-compose directly with podman.


Hmm, this is the one that's closer to the Python docker-compose and not "docker compose" that's built into docker right now right?


Yes. The language change coincides with a slew of new features.


Podman compose doesn't cover the whole compose spec, so no, it doesn't support it.


Looks like it. Last time I tried it, I wasn't able to use it because of this. I don't use or need kubernetes. I do use docker and docker-compose. A lot. On basically all my projects. It's not optional for me. So, sadly, Podman is not a usable docker desktop replacement for me.

I used qemu for a while on my old macbook with a linux vm that had ssh installed. You can actually make docker use a remote machine via ssh and with some environment variable magic you can actually make things like docker-compose work that way. A bit tricky with mounting volumes and forwarding ports of course but you can make that work as well. You can use ssh to forward local ports to a remote machine and you can setup qemu to share directories to the vm. It is a bit tedious to manage but I used this for several months with some scripts to set this up. So, having done this manually, that raises the question why Podman can't do this?

I reverted back to using docker desktop when I got my M1 macbook last year. It's just easier. But it would be nice to have some alternative if the need ever arises. If Podman improves their docker-compose support I might give it another try.


Sounds like containers could be OS built-in for non-cli applications? Any app can be containerized so that adds a level of isolation and security. I actually use containers whenever I can so I don't worry about left over garbage.


Definitely! Projects like Qubes OS prove that this is feasible on PC, and that it adds security.

https://www.qubes-os.org/


You’ve just described flatpak.

https://www.flatpak.org/


What's Red Hat's business model here? They seem hell bent on destroying Docker as a company but what's the end game there for them?


I think it is fair to say that Red Hat devs hate Docker devs. Early in the Docker days, Red Hat submitted multiple patches to Docker that fixed legitimate issues. Docker rejected[0] most of them.

After that, Red Had basically said, "screw you guys, I'm going to build my own container engine with blackjack and hookers!" and Podman, Skopeo, Buildah, etc. popped up.

[0] https://projectatomic.io/docs/docker_patches/ — Specifically if you're looking for nerd-drama, read through the rejected PRs.


First: it is ibm. Second: what is wrong with Canonical that they seem hellbent on destroying IBM? What is wrong with Torvalds that he seems hellbent on destroying Sun Microsystems, and IBM?


Torvalds wanted a UNIX that ran on his 386 PC and Sun wasn't going to ever offer that.

Canonical doesn't want to destroy IBM/Red Hat they want to compete with the same business model by selling support contracts.

Red Hat doesn't seem to want to compete with Docker using the same business model, just give it all away for free and then ... what?


> Torvalds wanted a UNIX that ran on his 386 PC and Sun wasn't going to ever offer that.

Sun did end up releasing Solaris for x86 in 1993, a couple years after Linus' first post to comp.os.minix.

Solaris x86 was a paid product though.

Linus apparently did not know about BSD, which goes back to ~1989.


On ramp into OpenShift since it uses podman underneath. Also, unlike Docker, Red Hat's revenue streams are extremely diversified, so they can afford to do this




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