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Podman v6.0.0

blog.podman.io

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Re: Podman v6.0.0

#141

Post by sudonem »

scheme271 wrote: post #135
sudonem wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux. It’s not the installation of podman that can be fiddly. It’s the setting up systemd unit files and local user accounts for rootless / daemonless deployment of containerized apps that can be a headache. It’s not hard. It’s just fiddly.

Doesn't quadlet fix some or all of those problems? It's supposed to allow you to convert podman containers to systemd unit files automatically

> Doesn't quadlet fix some or all of those problems?

It definitely can solve some of those problems, and that’s the approach I’d generally recommend.

But to answer OP’s question - my supposition was that the mere fact that such a device is even necessary (when compared to docker) is an added work that isn’t obviously easy to implement for someone who is just trying to learn how to containerize their app (and might be a developer but not that experienced with Linux administration) and this one of the main reasons Podman isn’t as popular as Docker.

I think Podman is better in a number of ways, but it isn’t the most intuitive to implement compared to Docker.

Re: Podman v6.0.0

#142

Post by sudonem »

drnick1 wrote: post #100
sudonem wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux. It’s not the installation of podman that can be fiddly. It’s the setting up systemd unit files and local user accounts for rootless / daemonless deployment of containerized apps that can be a headache. It’s not hard. It’s just fiddly.

> It’s just fiddly. You could quite simply have a systemd file that calls podman compose up when the service starts and podman compose down when it stops. Basically the same systemd file for every container stack defined in a single compose.yml. It's extremely easy, and does not do stuff behind your back like Docker (such as silently altering iptables rules).

Sure. But that wasn’t OP’s question.

The question was why Podman doesn’t have the adoption levels that Docker does, and my supposition was that (for those that don’t have much Linux administration experience) added steps like systems configs, or quadlets etc are just another barrier to entry that you don’t have with Docker.

I’m not arguing that Docker is better (I think Podman wins in a lot of ways actually) just that Podman requires a bit of extra work to implement well and that is just enough of an annoyance to tip the scales towards Docker.

Re: Podman v6.0.0

#143

Post by nijave »

SwellJoe wrote: post #4

No idea why Docker is still so much more popular than Podman. Podman is obviously the better implementation. The new network stuff is a welcome improvement.

Fuse overlayfs was noticeably slower than Docker's overlayfs setup. Maybe there's a way to reconfigure but I haven't checked lately.

I think it was Zig (building ghostty) was broken in podman with obscure "unknown file" errors. Turns out that was lack of fuse-overlayfs supporting some attributes it was trying to check.

It's random, little things like that which keep biting me every time I try to make the switch. I use it for simple stuff though.

Re: Podman v6.0.0

#144

Post by [deleted] »

LinXitoW wrote: post #128
sudonem wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not just mildly annoying, it completely ruins a great thing. Docker Compose is to stacks what Dockerfiles are to a single application. Podmans solution is to not commit to compose, but instead to create a bespoke mechanism involving a bunch of tiny files, all of which is insanely system (linux) specific, and therefore completely non-portable. I genuinely don't understand how someone can see the value of Docker,…

[deleted]

Re: Podman v6.0.0

#145

Post by notnullorvoid »

LinXitoW wrote: post #131

I don't understand how podman can be used for serious development work. Sure, if you want to be bound to one single platform (linux), and create a bunch of individual files, you can sort of get something a little bit like compose. But the beauty of compose is the same as the beauty of the Dockerfile. Portability, reproducibility (mostly), and a single readable file with all the relevant parts. It means a developer ca…

I run podman for local dev containers or for isolated sandboxes mostly. Anything needing orchestration and I go straight to k8s, never liked docker compose.

Re: Podman v6.0.0

#146

Post by throw2ih020 »

mati365 wrote: post #76

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]. [1] https://github.com/Mati365/hetzner-podman-bunjs-deploy

I switched my home server from k3s to quadlet and saw an 8% drop in power usage.

Re: Podman v6.0.0

#148

Post by stryan »

LinXitoW wrote: post #128
sudonem wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not just mildly annoying, it completely ruins a great thing. Docker Compose is to stacks what Dockerfiles are to a single application. Podmans solution is to not commit to compose, but instead to create a bespoke mechanism involving a bunch of tiny files, all of which is insanely system (linux) specific, and therefore completely non-portable. I genuinely don't understand how someone can see the value of Docker,…

> but instead to create a bespoke mechanism involving a bunch of tiny files, all of which is insanely system (linux) specific, and therefore completely non-portable.

To nit pick slightly, it's not really a bespoke mechanism it's just re-using the mechanisms provided by systemd. Quadlets are implemented as a systemd generator in order to re-use the existing service management system that exists on essentially all major Linux distros. Quadlets are less a direct competitor with compose (hence why Podman implements the compose spec) and more a way to better integrate containers with the rest of a system. The closer Podman native equivalent to compose is Kube files.

Re: Podman v6.0.0

#149

Post by rsyring »

As long as they refuse to support installing on Ubuntu (and other popular distros), without relying on the distro repos which are always out of date, they will continue to lose to Docker.

Any serious project in this space supports as many distros as possible.

It's OSS, so I'm not complaining per se, I have no right to. They owe me nothing.

But this one issue has kept me from seriously considering Podman for years. They don't care about my use case and I therefore don't care to use their project.

When getting the latest version looks like this[1], who is really going to consider this for serious production uses?

1: https://github.com/podman-container-tools/podman/discussions...

Re: Podman v6.0.0

#150

Post by stryan »

rsyring wrote: post #149

As long as they refuse to support installing on Ubuntu (and other popular distros), without relying on the distro repos which are always out of date, they will continue to lose to Docker. Any serious project in this space supports as many distros as possible. It's OSS, so I'm not complaining per se, I have no right to. They owe me nothing. But this one issue has kept me from seriously considering Podman for years. Th…

To be clear, it doesn't explicitly not support Ubuntu or anything, it just doesn't privilege it. Podman doesn't produce packages for any distros.
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