I really love Quadlet. I used to host my rootless containers on Hetzner, Ansible, SystemD and RockyLinux for years without any issues and extracted it to template repo [1].
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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:
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
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 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.
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 know, but companies legal or IT department make it easier, no docker of any kind being installed from https://www.docker.com.
Microsoft also is finally adding their own docker cli (wslc), due to having had enough pressure that many companies don't want to instal third party tools for Linux/Windows containers, even if API is compatible with docker daemon.
Apple is doing a similar approach on top of their virtualisation framework.
I've never interacted with anyone that knew them by another name. It's always (docker) container, where they may leave out the docker term, but if questioed what kind of container they mean theyll say it.
And the times I've called them OCI container (or image when talking about those) nobody knew what I meant until I clarified to docker
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.
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 …
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 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).
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).
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 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.
Do you have a good canonical source on this conversion? I’ve tried the conversion tools that came out around the release of podman v4 and again with v5. But somehow the files being generated contained deprecated features which pointed me to use different commands which led me to yet again different structures which when executed in systemd brought me back to what I originally had. I never got it to work fully.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
I can imagine that but I don't have those issues with the default config. So it allows using docker compose with podman directly.
On the other hand I could see it being hard for people to only install the cli part of docker. Luckily on arch that was simple due to how it's packaged.
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.
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.
Does it still completely screw up file/group owners in user containers? Because they keep saying it gets fixed and then that 1 out of 10 times it's not.
[1] https://github.com/Mati365/hetzner-podman-bunjs-deploy
The new network stuff is a welcome improvement.
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.
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'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.
podman-compose never worked well for me but docker-compose on podman did.
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.
Not even Tart or Apple Container support it, as far as I know. Maybe someone has found a way.
Works with OrbStack though.
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.
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.
And usability continues for being security’s number one enemy...
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...
Either an old experience you had, or a newer experience you had on vastly out of date packages and probably podman itself?
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
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.
So any time people talk about docker someone can go:
I use podman btw
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.
Microsoft also is finally adding their own docker cli (wslc), due to having had enough pressure that many companies don't want to instal third party tools for Linux/Windows containers, even if API is compatible with docker daemon.
Apple is doing a similar approach on top of their virtualisation framework.
I've never interacted with anyone that knew them by another name. It's always (docker) container, where they may leave out the docker term, but if questioed what kind of container they mean theyll say it.
And the times I've called them OCI container (or image when talking about those) nobody knew what I meant until I clarified to docker
"OCI container" doesn't have same ring, unfortunately.
And most things are just clones of Docker, e.g. Containerfile. In a clone situation, the original brand will always have the staying power.
I have a lot of compose files in my homelab/automation setup and those are what I’m most concerned about.
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.
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 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 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?
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.
Absolutely zero regrets, would never go back.
Other than that, I haven't found anything that makes me consider using docker again.
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.
Regardless it works enough for me to run local Kubernetes and Tilt
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 :)
Having a heterogenous fleet can be annoying though, some Podman-only config values[1] stop Docker dead in its tracks because it hates unknown fields.
1. It was a while back, and I can't remember what specific field it was, but it had to do with namespacing and/or (sub)UID mapping.
On the other hand I could see it being hard for people to only install the cli part of docker. Luckily on arch that was simple due to how it's packaged.
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.