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Podman Desktop: A Free OSS Alternative to Docker Desktop

podman-desktop.io

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Re: Podman Desktop: A Free OSS Alternative to Docker Desktop

#101
post #95
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn't a problem with Docker, which has tight control over what is deployed. That contention is heavily dependent upon how Docker was installed. Docker desktop, yes. Command line Docker on Linux? That used to be much more complicated and depended on if you had an OS vendor provided version or had a Docker provided repo install. RHEL’s repo version always seemed particularly out of date to me.

Yeah, fortunately it's two lines of shell to add Docker's community repo to CentOS/Rocky Linux.

The latest version of podman is always available at https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/rhcontainerbot/podma...

sudo dnf copr enable rhcontainerbot/podman-next -y

sudo dnf install podman

However the versions provided by the distro have gone through more tests. We are still improving this part as ideally you should be able to pick a version

Re: Podman Desktop: A Free OSS Alternative to Docker Desktop

#102

Recently I started using colima[0], a drop in replacement for Docker Desktop on Mac, and have seen an increase in performance and battery life. You can use all the normal docker and docker compose commands. It does not have a GUI but you can use the Docker extension on VS Code to have an overview of running containers. [0] https://github.com/abiosoft/colima

Looking to convert, but I still can't understand how this is more performant. Docker Desktop has lots of engineering going into performance crossing the host/VM barrier. IIRC lima just pipes over SSH. How could that be faster?

It's quite trivial to have both installed and you can easily switch between Colima and Docker, I think it's worth testing it out.

Re: Podman Desktop: A Free OSS Alternative to Docker Desktop

#103

The problem with podman at the moment (IMO) is version drift. RHEL/Fedora and friends get the latest and greatest (4), Debian/Ubuntu are stuck on 3.x. This isn't a problem with Docker, which has tight control over what is deployed. This means how you use Podman directly or indirectly via tools and plugins may change.

a workaround to get the latest and greatest podman on debian/ubuntu is to use opensuse's kubic repo - it's even mentioned on the podman installation page [0]. but they don't recommend it for production use (though i haven't noticed any issues so far on ubuntu 22.04 and 22.10). [0] https://podman.io/getting-started/installation

Latest and greatest we publish on https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/rhcontainerbot/podma...

Will check if we need to change the docs.

But your recommendation remains. Better to use the latest release as indicated on the GitHub releases of podman. These have seen more tests and integration use/tests

Alternatively you can run `podman machine` which sets up a VM with the stable version.

Re: Podman Desktop: A Free OSS Alternative to Docker Desktop

#104

Recently I started using colima[0], a drop in replacement for Docker Desktop on Mac, and have seen an increase in performance and battery life. You can use all the normal docker and docker compose commands. It does not have a GUI but you can use the Docker extension on VS Code to have an overview of running containers. [0] https://github.com/abiosoft/colima

Best part: it's QEMU so you can choose your CPU architecture and run x86_64 containers on ARM Macs

I've been telling my colleagues with M1 Macs to use the

  --platform linux/arm64
argument with Docker Desktop and that seems to be working for them.

Re: Podman Desktop: A Free OSS Alternative to Docker Desktop

#105
post #47

I have been experimenting with the arm64 windows dev kit, neither docker desktop, podman desktop or rancher desktop had arm64 builds. Installing the amd64 builds did not work either. I was surprised to find out wsl2 now supports systemd https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/systemd-support-i... I was able to install docker normally inside wsl2 and it worked perfectly. No "desktop" app needed. This will be a game…

I work on the Windows enablement team of podman machine andam glad to take question or feature requests.

We are looking into enabling systemd, though as said, this isn't GA yet. The functionality would only work for Win11, so we have to enable a win10 workaround for this (we have), but this has to be based on feature detection.

Arm binaries is being looked at, but can't commit to a timeframe when this will be delivered.

Re: Podman Desktop: A Free OSS Alternative to Docker Desktop

#106
podman/skopeo/buildah and systemd managed user services are an absolute game changer for dockerless rootless containers. pod and service defs are supported and can be exported to k8s when or if you ever need it and theres even a podman-compose plugin to get you moved off docker compose while yoou learn

Re: Podman Desktop: A Free OSS Alternative to Docker Desktop

#107

Recently I started using colima[0], a drop in replacement for Docker Desktop on Mac, and have seen an increase in performance and battery life. You can use all the normal docker and docker compose commands. It does not have a GUI but you can use the Docker extension on VS Code to have an overview of running containers. [0] https://github.com/abiosoft/colima

Best part: it's QEMU so you can choose your CPU architecture and run x86_64 containers on ARM Macs

Podman works the same way.

Re: Podman Desktop: A Free OSS Alternative to Docker Desktop

#108

Recently I started using colima[0], a drop in replacement for Docker Desktop on Mac, and have seen an increase in performance and battery life. You can use all the normal docker and docker compose commands. It does not have a GUI but you can use the Docker extension on VS Code to have an overview of running containers. [0] https://github.com/abiosoft/colima

Best part: it's QEMU so you can choose your CPU architecture and run x86_64 containers on ARM Macs

x86_64 containers on ARM mac are extremely slow.

Re: Podman Desktop: A Free OSS Alternative to Docker Desktop

#109
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On windows, docker desktop can use Hyper-V, but it also supports WSL2 as a backend.

The DD WSL2 backend is also creating a VM in Hyper-V. Actually, it's creating two VMs (docker-desktop and docker-desktop-data). It's also running a proxy in your WSL2 VM so you can access the docker server. It's all a bit convoluted TBH. I actually decided today to stop using DD on my Windows machine and just run docker native inside the WSL2 VM instance instead. Still not sure what solution I'm going for on my Mac.

Talking about WSL2 in general: it creates one VM, with mount namespaces per "distro". That's why everything shares the same network (they didn't set up separate network namespaces). Also, the GUI support in Windows 11 is a separate mount namespace.

Re: Podman Desktop: A Free OSS Alternative to Docker Desktop

#110

Recently I started using colima[0], a drop in replacement for Docker Desktop on Mac, and have seen an increase in performance and battery life. You can use all the normal docker and docker compose commands. It does not have a GUI but you can use the Docker extension on VS Code to have an overview of running containers. [0] https://github.com/abiosoft/colima

my personal experience. Much earlier this year at work, we migrated everyone to colima and I had to support devs with their issues. So many small issues kept popping up, and was definitely not a drop in replacement for us.

The higher ups eventually let us just buy docker desktop and we are all happier now.

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