Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I ditched Docker for Podman

codesmash.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 670 posts

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#261

Post by chrisweekly »

iainmerrick wrote: post #113
xhrpost wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the official docs: >This section describes how to install Docker Engine on Linux, also known as Docker CE. Docker Engine is also available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, through Docker Desktop. https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ I'm not an expert but everything I read online says that Docker runs on Linux so with Mac you need a virtual environment like Docker Desktop, Colima, or Podman to run it.

If you're already paying for Macs, is paying for Docker Desktop really a big problem?

I think the point is that Docker Desktop for macOS is bad.

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#262

Post by rsyring »

dathinab wrote: post #255
rsyring wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, there aren't even any trusted repos out there building/publishing a .deb for it. The ones that I could find when I searched last were all outdated or indicated they were not going to keep moving forward. I could get over this. But, IMO, it lends itself to asking the "why" question. Why wouldn't Podman make installing it easier? And the only thing that makes sense to me is that RedHat doesn't want their…

> Why wouldn't Podman make installing it easier? What else can they do then having a package for every distro? https://podman.io/docs/installation#installing-on-linux Including instructions to build from source (including for Debian and Ubuntu): https://podman.io/docs/installation#building-from-source I don't know about this specific case but Debian and or Ubuntu having outdated software is a common Debian/Ubuntu pro…

> What else can they do...

They can do what Docker and many other software providers do that are committed to cross OS functionality. They could build packages for those OSes. Example:

https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/#install-using...

The install instructions you link to are relying on the OS providers to build/package Podman as part of their OS release process. But that is notoriously out-of-date.

You could argue, "Not Podman's Problem", and, in one sense, you'd be right. But, again, it leads to the question "Why wouldn't they make it their problem like so many other popular projects have?" and I believe I answered that previously.

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#263

Post by codedokode »

rsyring wrote: post #250
idoubtit wrote: post #59

I also ditched docker when I could. In my experience... Podman with pods is a better experience than docker-compose. It's easy to interactively create a pod and add containers to it. The containers ports will behave as if they were on the same machine. Then `podman generate kube` and you have a yaml file that you can run with `podman kube play`. Rootless networking is very slow unless you install `passt`. With Debian…

> Rootless networking is very slow I came across just how slow recently: - Container -> host: 0.398 Gbps vs. 42.2 Gbps - host -> container: 20.6 Gbps vs 47.4 Gbps Source: https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl/blob/main/docs/rootles...

The slow speed is for using slirp4netns, not containers in general.

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#264

Post by axlee »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #195
nickjj wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large company who is buying licenses for tools has to deal with this for many different things. Docker is not unique here. An IT department for a company of that size should have ironed out workflows and automated ways to keep tabs on who has what and who needs what. They may also be under various compliance requirements that expect due diligence to happen every quarter to make sure everything is legit from a licen…

It becomes a pain point when the IT team never heard of docker, all new licenses need to be approved by the legal department, and your manager is afraid to ask for any extra budget. Also, I don't want to have to troubleshoot why the docker daemon isn't running every time I need it

>It becomes a pain point when the IT team never heard of docker

Where do you work ? Is that even possible in 2025?

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#265

Post by rsyring »

ramon156 wrote: post #241
awoimbee wrote: post #220

The main issue is podman support on Ubuntu. Ubuntu ships outdated podman versions that don't work out of the box. So I use podman v5, GitHub actions uses podman v3, and my coworkers on Ubuntu use docker. So now my script must work with old podman, recent podman and docker

One of the reasons I don't use Ubuntu/debian is because it's just too damn slow with updates. I'm noticing that to this day it's still an issue. Yes I could use flatpack on ubuntu, however I feel like this is partly something Ubuntu/Debian should provide out-of-the-box

Ubuntu is committed to the Snap ecosystem and there is a lot of software that you can get from a snap if you need it to be evergreen.

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#266

Post by arunc »

nickjj wrote: post #46
t43562 wrote: post #21

To provide 1 contrary opinion to all the others saying they have a problem: Podman rocks for me! I find docker hard to use and full of pitfalls and podman isn't any worse. On the plus side, any company I work for doesn't have to worry about licences. Win win!

> On the plus side, any company I work for doesn't have to worry about licences. Win win! Was this a deal breaker for any company? I ask because the Docker Desktop paid license requirement is quite reasonable. If you have less than 250 employees and make less than $10 million in annual revenue it's free. If you have a dev team of 10 people and are extremely profitable to where you need licenses you'd end up paying $9…

$90 is also like 1.5 hours of work that I would've spent debugging podman anyway. And I've spent more than a few hours every time podman breaks, it to be honest.

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#268

Post by mixmastamyk »

miki123211 wrote: post #249

I've been dealing with setting up Podman for work over the last week or so, and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. If you use rootless Podman on a Redhat-derived distribution (which means Selinux), along with a non-root user in your container itself, you're in for a world of pain.

Sounds like you need to grant the user sufficient permissions. What else might go wrong?

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#269

Post by marcel_hecko »

miki123211 wrote: post #249

I've been dealing with setting up Podman for work over the last week or so, and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. If you use rootless Podman on a Redhat-derived distribution (which means Selinux), along with a non-root user in your container itself, you're in for a world of pain.

I have done the same. It's not too bad - just don't rely on LLMs to design your quadlets or systemd unit files. Read the docs for the exact podman version you use and it's pretty okay.

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#270

Post by alyandon »

ramon156 wrote: post #241
awoimbee wrote: post #220

The main issue is podman support on Ubuntu. Ubuntu ships outdated podman versions that don't work out of the box. So I use podman v5, GitHub actions uses podman v3, and my coworkers on Ubuntu use docker. So now my script must work with old podman, recent podman and docker

One of the reasons I don't use Ubuntu/debian is because it's just too damn slow with updates. I'm noticing that to this day it's still an issue. Yes I could use flatpack on ubuntu, however I feel like this is partly something Ubuntu/Debian should provide out-of-the-box

LTS in general being slow to uptake new versions of software is a feature not a bug. It gives predictability at the cost of having to deal with older versions of software.

With Ubuntu at least, some upstreams publish official PPAs so that you aren't stuck on the rapidly aging versions that Canonical picks when they cut an LTS release.

Debian I found out recently has something similar now via "extrepo".

Post reply on HN