Podman is a lot like Docker: a tool for running OCI containers. While it maintains backwards compatibility with Dockerfile and docker-compose syntax, it offers a lot of other benefits:

  • daemonless: it can run containers without a daemon process running in the background.
  • Rootless: can run containers without root privileges
  • pods: can group containers into secluded pods, which share resources and network namespace

Podman has other features I haven’t explored yet, like compatibility with Kubernetes yaml file, and being able to run containers as systemd units.

Have you used podman before? What are your thoughts on it?

  • CyclohexaneOP
    1·
    1 year ago

    Docker has rootless containers, too, although I think Podman has slightly better options for unprivileged uid management.

    I have not used Docker rootless, but I imagine podman has much better and more flexible network configuration as well?

    On systemd, I actually do not use systemd either, hence why I said I never tried those features. It is not a hard requirement at all. Though I have not tried to use any integrations with OpenRC and podman