Live data from Hacker News

Migrating from Docker to Podman

marcusnoble.co.uk

51–60 of 111 posts

Re: Migrating from Docker to Podman

#52
post #38

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that Docker is only charging for Docker Desktop, which is a GUI and management tool required to use Docker on Windows and MacOS - both of which are not supported by Podman. And Docker Desktop is not required (or even available) on Linux - the only platform Podman supports.

you're right. And the caveat is still that Docker Desktop costs $240 a year only for companies with $10m+ in revenue or 250+ employees. Free for everyone else. I don't get the whole "Let's spend weeks rewriting our build infrastructure to save $240 a year" strategy going on here.

> I don't get the whole "Let's spend weeks rewriting our build infrastructure to save $240 a year" strategy going on here.

I think that's because 2 things are at play here:

1. People are busy and often rarely read past the headline announcing the change, so they are unlikely to know of the caveat.

2. People don't like being taxed at the infrastructure level, so the default price for plumbing tools like Docker is $0. What's the assurance that the $240/yr will not rise to $2400/yr a year later, especially if they fail to hit their revenue numbers? Once the glove comes off, it's so much safer to cap your costs today by seeking out an alternative, rather than be confronted with uncapped costs (or any kind of vendor uncertainty) in the future.

Re: Migrating from Docker to Podman

#54

Shameless plug: I wrote undocker[1] to convert docker images to a rootfs tarball, so I can run them with plain systemd. Goal: no more daemons to run 3rd party containers, systemd is good enough by now: resource limits, isolation, chroot, dynamic users, logging, and more. Low-level tooling is done, I am now building ecosystem around it: easy installation, convert to deb/rpm, systemd units, etc. [1]: https://sr.ht/~mot…

I wrote a little tool to make creating and interacting with systemd-nspawn containers easier (on Arch Linux only right now):

https://github.com/b0o/arch-lwc

Not intended for any sort of production. I personally use it to run Firefox inside a container and for testing.

Re: Migrating from Docker to Podman

#55
post #51

podman is wholesale copying docker, doesn't that feel a little bit unfair? What does docker think about it, I guess they don't want to draw attention to it(?).

Offering API-compatible tools is very deeply ingrained in the UNIX philosophy; just think of the different implementations of "ls", or the C functions mandated by POSIX, or the way that clang (the compiler targeting LLVM) has the same flag names as GCC, which probably copied them from somewhere else in the first place...

Generally, if you publish an Open Source project, you cannot complain if people copy parts of it, even it's the command line arguments / API / whatever.

Re: Migrating from Docker to Podman

#58
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docker has a rootless mode in the same way that podman has a rootless mode.

Having just fought it, Docker rootless is a pain to set up and feels like a hack; it's not the default behavior, requires a lot of additional setup to get it working, behaves differently than rootful docker, and lastly most documentation assumes you're using rootful docker because it's been the only way for years. The fundamental architecture of docker makes rootless awkward but the company needs to compete with podm…

I do not agree that the architecture makes it difficult to do . The main issue is you have to start the daemon. Systemd can at least manage this for you as an unprivileged user.

That said, certainly a no-daemon approach takes an extra step out of the mix here.

Re: Migrating from Docker to Podman

#59

Shameless plug: I wrote undocker[1] to convert docker images to a rootfs tarball, so I can run them with plain systemd. Goal: no more daemons to run 3rd party containers, systemd is good enough by now: resource limits, isolation, chroot, dynamic users, logging, and more. Low-level tooling is done, I am now building ecosystem around it: easy installation, convert to deb/rpm, systemd units, etc. [1]: https://sr.ht/~mot…

> Goal: no more daemons to run 3rd party containers, systemd is good enough by now: resource limits, isolation, chroot, dynamic users, logging, and more. Isn't that what Firecracker[1] does ? (Well, ok, not really, but a bit closer to the base system than Docker/Podman) [1] https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/

Systemd uses cgroups like Docker. Firecracker uses virtualization.

Re: Migrating from Docker to Podman

#60
post #51

podman is wholesale copying docker, doesn't that feel a little bit unfair? What does docker think about it, I guess they don't want to draw attention to it(?).

Offering API-compatible tools is very deeply ingrained in the UNIX philosophy; just think of the different implementations of "ls", or the C functions mandated by POSIX, or the way that clang (the compiler targeting LLVM) has the same flag names as GCC, which probably copied them from somewhere else in the first place... Generally, if you publish an Open Source project, you cannot complain if people copy parts of it,…

One can also argue that the “openness” is what allowed docker to be popular. If it was locked down from day 1 there’d have been a lot less interest. Nobody likes being tied to things at that level.
Post reply on HN