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Exploring Podman: A More Secure Docker Alternative

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Re: Exploring Podman: A More Secure Docker Alternative

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docker is every bit as open and not locked in as podman. Perhaps even more so as it's so widely used and doesn't require redhat specific projects around it. Are you confusing docker with docker hub?

No, I’m not confusing requiring a DockerHub account to even install Docker. Though that is an excellent example of it’s non-openness, thank you.

What? That's just completely wrong. Even for docker desktop (which is completely different from docker engine) you don't need an account

Re: Exploring Podman: A More Secure Docker Alternative

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docker is every bit as open and not locked in as podman. Perhaps even more so as it's so widely used and doesn't require redhat specific projects around it. Are you confusing docker with docker hub?

> doesn't require redhat specific projects around it. that is like saying oh no docker requires docker (company) specific projects around it and as far as I can tell docker in recent years mainly cares about docker desktop and swarm which are less open then podman given their business model

Docker still sees a ton of development. I wouldn't be surprised if it sees more dev than podman.

And my point was more so that podman is obviously designed around the rhel ecosystem. I'm not saying it's closed! Just that even if we were to (wrongly) argue that one of the two is more "locked in", it's clearly podman. Docker is so much more widely used, ported, is basically as completely "non locked in" as it could be.

The only possible "lock in" is maybe the docker images namespace defaulting to docker hub but imo that's trivial and basically more of an early design choice that can't be reverted.

By all means, we can argue about technical differences but the often repeated argument about docker being less open than podman or whatever is just not true

Re: Exploring Podman: A More Secure Docker Alternative

#75

Glad that podman is getting more traction tbh, too many tools are built with the assumption that people add the sudo docker group which break if you have any kind of security conscious docker setup (such as not blindly giving it root access).

I always find it amusing that the cutting edge future of serverless/containers/etc was built on the back of running a bunch of stuff as root. Very cool.

I'm trying to get up to speed with docker atm, is it the applications inside the container that are typically running as root (which people are careless about from a "whats the worst that can happen" attitude?) or is the typical pattern that people are running the docker host process as root (maybe in order to allow the host to expose ports at 80/443 without some reverse proxy/firewall in front of it?)

Re: Exploring Podman: A More Secure Docker Alternative

#76

I still don't really understand why Red Hat invests into creating a Docker alternative, but I really like it. Podman does pretty much everything Docker does, but it has more features (e.g. pods) or the way Podman does it tends to be better (e.g. daemonless container spawning process). The main issue to a common developer would be Docker compose I suppose, which if you use simple compose files, there's actually a podm…

> I see no reason using Docker at least on Linux boxes. Not sure how Podman fares on macOS or Windows. I hope the majority doesn't end up with your point of view. Docker is not RedHat/IBM. If Docker goes away RedHat gets to continue to push their corporate agenda with a heavier hand. There are some advantages to Podman, but there are also some things that have not been executed well in RedHat's mission to replace all…

Red Hat had ample reason to develop Podman when they started the project and no reason now to abandon it.

Red Hat tried to work with Docker, but it didn’t go well. Docker also shot itself in the foot trying to push Swarm over Kubernetes and a bunch of other silliness until they had some serious management/leadership changes.

Podman, IIRC, is 100% FOSS. Not sure you can say the same for Docker. If Red Hat gets stupid with Podman, the rest the community can pick it up and carry on under a new name. Not true of Docker. If Docker gets bought by, say Broadcom tomorrow, the community can only fork the bits that are open.

Re: Exploring Podman: A More Secure Docker Alternative

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They invest in it because Docker is waaay out of spec with how things are done on Linux. Doing things that break the system, struggling with rootless for years, and who can miss the vendor lock-in? Podman is open and compliant and compliments k8s as well. It’s just nonsense the amount of effort developers have invested in Docker because it was first to market for easy containers.

Docker is every bit as open and not locked in as podman. Perhaps even more so as it's so widely used and doesn't require redhat specific projects around it. Are you confusing docker with docker hub?

It’s really not if you’re talking about Docker Desktop or any of the commercial products: https://docs.docker.com/subscription/desktop-license/

Podman Desktop is completely open.

Re: Exploring Podman: A More Secure Docker Alternative

#78
post #49

I had some issues with podman working on my m1 mac about 1-2 yrs ago. I’ll give it a shot again. Looks like it has matured very fast.

I've had issues as recently as this week with podman on an m1 laptop - the container would start but after a short time would freeze completely and couldn't even be killed - only solution i found was to restart my laptop. Eventually, I gave up and went back to using docker.

Re: Exploring Podman: A More Secure Docker Alternative

#79
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docker is every bit as open and not locked in as podman. Perhaps even more so as it's so widely used and doesn't require redhat specific projects around it. Are you confusing docker with docker hub?

It’s really not if you’re talking about Docker Desktop or any of the commercial products: https://docs.docker.com/subscription/desktop-license/ Podman Desktop is completely open.

Well sure, then let's talk about podman desktop. I'm pretty sure the discussion was around docker itself, but maybe I got confused... Because otherwise you can just use other tools rather that docker desktop to manage docker containers (eg rancher desktop, which is also open source).

Re: Exploring Podman: A More Secure Docker Alternative

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I’m not confusing requiring a DockerHub account to even install Docker. Though that is an excellent example of it’s non-openness, thank you.

What? That's just completely wrong. Even for docker desktop (which is completely different from docker engine) you don't need an account

It appears they have since reverted the decision in 2020 but it used to require logging in for Docker Engine:

https://github.com/docker/docs/issues/6910

I did not know this as I stopped using Docker long ago.

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