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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

      podman manifest create my-image:latest
      podman build --platform linux/amd64 --manifest my-image:latest .
      podman build --platform linux/arm64 --manifest my-image:latest .
      podman manifest push my-custom-image:latest docker://docker.io/user/my-image:latest

Fuse overlayfs was noticeably slower than Docker's overlayfs setup. Maybe there's a way to reconfigure but I haven't checked lately.

I think it was Zig (building ghostty) was broken in podman with obscure "unknown file" errors. Turns out that was lack of fuse-overlayfs supporting some attributes it was trying to check.

It's random, little things like that which keep biting me every time I try to make the switch. I use it for simple stuff though.

In many places it doesn't matter, because cheap companies don't want to even hear about Docker, so one gets to choose between podman, rancher, and if on Windows wslc is going to be a thing.

Docker (the company) lost the plot in Linux containers, OCI got standardized, alternative runtimes came to be, and very few companies actually care to pay for Docker Desktop or the other services they sell.

I went all in on podman compose last year but went all back because off constant permission errors. I thought it was going to be better than docker because I run the containers as a user… but man the amount of time I wasted on files that either I or the container itself or some other container couldn’t read… With docker I felt that stuff just works.

And then there are the extra steps: Enable user lingering, make a systemd service that starts the compose containers (and there is nothing really “native”, it’s a script.) With Docker compose containers just restart if you say so in the file.

There are many great things about podman, will try again in a year or so perhaps?

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

Default stickiness, tbh.

A few years ago, I started moving towards Podman when it got to that "good enough" point on both Linux and macOS and when Docker started to remind people about Docker Desktop that it needed a license for commercial use.

Even then, it took around a year or so to transition.

I never liked Docker, but someone pointed out to me that Podman is backwards compatible, doesn't need root, and even has simulated docker commands if you need them so you can just alias podman to docker... and voila same experience, so every online tutorial works just fine.

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.

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

Isn't Docker is basically a front end to containerd, the most common k8s container runtime? One could just as well ask why use a completely separate container stack just for local development when docker shares the same business end as the prod environment.

it has a stronger brand, probably because it was created first. I still hear the term "docker container" (sometimes).

Colima just seems to be easier to work with using Docker.

Devcontainers work without having to pass special arguments and deal with inconsistent stuff once in the devcontainer itself.

K3d is easier to work with Docker.

Docker locally just makes sense.

Yeah, a great developer I know showed me how he could use it to get a safe dev container for Claude Code, in a way that wasn't doable with Docker.

PaaS like render.com explicitly support Docker.

As a developer, I wager that any gains I get from Podman will be dwarfed by bugs that I’m encountering in the other software I use.

I’m not implying that Podman causes the bugs. I’m saying that I’ll be more likely to be the first person to encounter the bug.

For the company I work at, it’s primarily inertia. We started using containers with Docker. And then it just continued. We are two out of 20+ developers who would like to use Podman, but the rest is just ”eh, why bother?”. And I don’t fully fault them for holding that position, Docker generally works. Why switch to something which may or may not provide some benefit (most which will be indirect such as better security and setup)? I still continue to mention Podman regularly though …

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

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.

Brand.

"OCI container" doesn't have same ring, unfortunately.

And most Podman things are just clones of Docker, e.g. Containerfile. In a clone situation, the original brand will always have the staying power.

I mean for local dev I like that I can just press one button and have Kubernetes available. Podman Desktop had something approaching that simplicity but I have found Docker Desktop more stable in my limited experience with it.

I used rancher + podman on Windows. Mainly Rancher. The last 8 months I use exclusively Podman + Podman Desktop. Rancher has a slightly better desktop app and can manage podman.

I liked Orbstack better than colima which was better than Docker Desktop. Then I found https://smolmachines.com's smolvm microvms.

It's been a couple months so I forget what problems I ran into, but Docker's AI bullshit pushed me over the edge and I tried switching to Podman. I ran into some compatibility issues. Alas I don't recall the details.

So I tried Rancher Desktop and other than I keep forgetting its name it just worked.

It's another simple option for those who need it.

To be clear, it doesn't explicitly not support Ubuntu or anything, it just doesn't privilege it. Podman doesn't produce packages for any distros.

I switched my home server from k3s to quadlet and saw an 8% drop in power usage.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

For me, I'm as grateful for Podman as I am for git.

Podman has been mature and sane. In cases where $someone's container depends on su privs, I blame the $someone, not Podman.

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 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.

In our shop, I wasn't one of those who knew Docker in and out, got just enough into it I could containerise applications we needed to have containerised, which was of a modest scope -- no crazy networking setup that required bleeding edge or anything like that. Anyway, after only a few months into Docker, organisation announced migration to Podman across the board. Initial impressions were soured by, ironically, poor out-of-the-box installation experience _on Red Hat Enterprise Linux_ (which we run everywhere where Linux is used) -- getting `podman` to do much of anything useful in the "rootless" mode matched the typical anecdotal evidence requiring a bunch of incancations you may or may not understand fully, as RHEL itself wasn't ready for the package, apparently. That was in 2024 though, and it rapidly got better after that. These days I have all but forgotten we used to use `docker` but use `podman` instead, but then again I have had to learn plenty enough about at least the latter -- enough I am able to navigate problems better than earlier (what with UID/GID mapping, for example -- which too had to be done manually occasionally when we first transitioned).

There is however, the LLMs that pull their fair share of documentation, or rather, replacing it. Not opening that can of worms here, but heck am I glad I can query `$AI` about occasional Podman "burst pipe", instead of hitting Google and looking for [that one e-mail message from a guy who had exactly the same issue, solved it _and_ had the wherewithal to post the solution](https://xkcd.com/979/).

We never got into use of `docker compose`, not in any capacity to speak of, and these days we use Kubernetes and OKD/Openshift for things that Docker -- in my understanding -- solves with swarm and composition. It works well enough, I almost don't find it worthwhile to mention that it does :)

The biggest differences for me were related to non trivial network setups. Is just that you find docs and how tos for docker, but less so for podman.

Other than that, I haven't found anything that makes me consider using docker again.

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.

Yes. 99% of things just worked, zero modifications.

The few cases where something was not directly translatable was <10 minutes with a coding agent to make some minor config changes, and then it just worked.

Good for the most part, I appreciate them being pretty much a drop in replacement (mostly so tools that reference docker can just work usually).

Regardless it works enough for me to run local Kubernetes and Tilt

Not a power user but compatibility has been excellent.

You don't have to fully switch. I use podman in socket mode with the docker cli as a frontend.

Sic an AI cli on a copy of it. They take care of that stuff pretty easily.

I mean I should probably also say it’s good enough that Bazzite ships with it enabled (not something I’d have expected)

What I have observed through my limited experience, primarily testing docker-based development env setups in podman, is that it's usually not a straight swap.

I switched from Docker to rootless Podman for our build server. Completely positive experience so far. Our builds went _down_ from 1 minute to 2 seconds.

I'm also using podman-compose that is small and delightful (I had to fix a few bugs there). It's just one Python file that you can copy.

I've found most of the differences to come not from the socket API, or the logical behavior, or CLI differences. But instead from assumptions Docker makes, that it's running rootful, when Podman will not (by default).

As such, most of the fixes for Podman/Docker incompatibilities is just addressing that assumption with a few extra flags on the Podman commands to change how the user namespace maps between the container and the host, etc etc.

I've been using Podman on Mac and Linux for 3 years, and unfortunately, I have found this to be perennially true. I am willing to doggedly pursue the root cause and file bugs, but for many people it will just seem broken.

Most recently: Netavark doesn't match Docker's behavior with accepting broadcast traffic on a published port.

Yes! It put me off Podman for years. I do now think it has some clever ideas and if you’re running RHEL it’s a no brainer, but they should be more upfront that you will have to adapt. Especially if you’re moving from rootful docker to rootless Podman.

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.

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.

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.

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

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/

> 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.

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.

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.

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.