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Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

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Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#71
post #30
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks more like the Podman version of Docker Desktop (which is closed source, and no longer free), effectively, as it's handling the virtualization aspects for you according to[0]. [0] https://twitter.com/simnalamburt/status/1434244533001224192

The Docker CLI is also available for Mac, and is open-source.

But the Docker engine (that runs containers on the local machine) is only available on Mac and Windows via Docker Desktop which is not free-as-in-beer anymore for all.

Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#72

Tangentially, I wonder if Moby underestimated the amount of human hours that were instantly allocated to alternatives as soon as they announced Docker Desktop was going paid. (I don't know if this project is a consequence of that announcement or not.) Hopefully Podman will be able to capitalize on this event and get the polish needed for widespread use.

Moby has the power of using a well-established name ("I want to have Docker on my desktop, let's google that, oh, hi Docker Desktop!") that also appears in a lot of tutorials and training material, both aspects that developers tend not to spend time on.

Given how often I still stumble over massively obsolete documentation and "helpful" articles from 15 to 20 years ago, I'd say they are safe.

Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#73
post #29

Calling podman “the open-source docker alternative” is disingenuous. The Docker engine which it competes with is also open-source. The only closed Docker product is their desktop wrapper, for which podman is not an alternative. Podman people, you’re better than this.

Docker isn’t true open source in my opinion. With true open source you can compile your own version of the software with your own changes and it works just like the official release. You can’t do this with Docker Engine afaik.

Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#74
post #45
post #8

Idk why people keep pushing for this, on a personal dev machine, root is not a problem, and then there is QEMU

It certainly is a problem. We want to run local development stacks with Docker, but, since it runs as root, it leaves files into your home directory (database and other files mounted from the guest) that are owned by root, so you can never delete them. It's really bad UX.

Home directory, /etc, or /root/.ssh/authorized_keys, depending on what arguments you pass to -v.

Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#75

Planning to buy a new MacBook for a family member I have some question to whoever is into the Apple wold: is that true that the next generation of MacBooks is going to have classic Esc&F# buttons, MagSafe, SD card reader and HDMI? When is it expected to be released? How is a MacBookPro better than a MacBookAir of the same specs (RAM&SSD)? We were going to buy a new MacBook now but the classic parts returning sound re…

The only difference between the current Pro and Air is that the latter can thermal throttle.

I got the Air and I have managed to make it throttle while running x86 games. However, it wasn’t by much. The games remained playable.

Overall, it’s great. Very fast and entirely silent.

Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#76

It looks like the real nice thing here is having a formula for QEMU with the ARM patch applied: https://github.com/simnalamburt/qemu/tree/hvf With this I believe you could also used [nerd]( https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl ) instead of podman but I haven't tested it yet. Edit: It works. Had a bit of trouble since I wanted to uninstall the "real" QEMU first, but `lima` still depended on it, and then installing th…

> With this I believe you could also used [nerd](https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl) instead of podman but I haven't tested it yet.

This is the first time I hear of nerdctl and it's _very_ interesting.

M1 aside, does it work fine on regular arm64 linux? I run a small Raspberry Pi 4B homeserver and I would have used podman for improved security, were it not for the poor/incomplete Compose support, while nerdctl seems to explicitly support it.

Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#77
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docker Desktop (the software people must use to run Docker under any Mac or Windows machines) is closed source.

You can run docker on Windows without Docker Desktop. I think the only thing that requires Docker Desktop on windows is if you want windows containers, but I don't really think that's a common usecase.

You can do the same thing for native containers by setting up Server Core VM with Docker Engine and the client on host.

Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Mac/Darwin has cgroups but it's based on BSD to it might have jails?

So my somewhat shaky understanding is that Apple does have some form of jails in Darwin, because they use it on iOS (hence, "jailbreaking"), but for some reason doesn't ship it in desktop Darwin (aka macOS).

Apple’s sandbox focuses on isolating the OS from non-platform binaries. It doesn’t have namespaces or cgroups.

Jailbreaking on iOS is mostly about that sandbox. It doesn’t relate to BSD jails.

On macOS, Apple made the sandbox more lenient and implemented it a bit differently than on iOS. But both have roughly the same goals. They’re also alike in that both use the same kernel-level framework (MACF) to do their job.

But the MACF is completely off-limits to everyone outside Apple. Not even accredited kext developers can use it. So I think that no one except Apple could possibly add container-style isolation to macOS.

Re: Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines

#80

Tangentially, I wonder if Moby underestimated the amount of human hours that were instantly allocated to alternatives as soon as they announced Docker Desktop was going paid. (I don't know if this project is a consequence of that announcement or not.) Hopefully Podman will be able to capitalize on this event and get the polish needed for widespread use.

Moby has the power of using a well-established name ("I want to have Docker on my desktop, let's google that, oh, hi Docker Desktop!") that also appears in a lot of tutorials and training material, both aspects that developers tend not to spend time on. Given how often I still stumble over massively obsolete documentation and "helpful" articles from 15 to 20 years ago, I'd say they are safe.

They are as safe as MySQL is
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