I ditched Docker for Podman • Hacker News Board

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#541

Post by puilp0502 » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:13 AM UTC

> If your Docker Compose workflow is overly complex, just convert it to Kubernetes YAML.

Is this also applicable for single-host services? I have a lot of my toy projects packaged as a Docker Compose, and I just `docker compose up -d` in my EC2 host and it's ready to go. Last time I dabbled with K8s I remember it requiring separate etcd cluster, and a lot of configurations. I wonder if my existing projects could be converted to K8s manifest and it would be just as convenient as the `docker compose up -d`.

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#542

Post by brokegrammer » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:18 AM UTC

I had the opposite experience with Podman and decided to stick with Docker because I prefer the "daemon-full" architecture and ease of installation.

I even wrote wrote an article about that: https://joshkaramuth.com/blog/docker-vs-podman/

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#543

Post by adastra22 » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:21 AM UTC

AlphaSite wrote: post #519

sroerick wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, this seems like an absolutely valid use case. Big enterprise microservice architecture, I get it. If you have islands of dev teams, and a dedicated CI/CD dev ops team, then this makes more sense. But this puts you in a league with some pretty advanced deployment tools, like high level K8, Ansible, cloud orchestration work, and nobody thinks those tools are really that appropriate for the majority of devteams. Peo…

Having a reproducible dev environment is great when everyone’s laptop is different and may be running different OSes, libraries, runtimes, etc. Also docker has the network effect. If there was a good light weight tool that was better enough people would absolutely use it. But it doesn’t exist. In an ideal world it wouldn’t exist, but we don’t live there.

Docker is that lightweight tool, isn’t it? It doesn’t seem that complex to me. Unfamiliar to those who haven’t used it, but not intrinsic complexity.

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#544

Post by taspeotis » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:27 AM UTC

Podman works 99% for me, it’s getting better each release. But every so often I get bitten by some incompatibility and have to use Docker.

At the moment it seems docker compose misbehaves with Podman when WSL2 gets involved.

I look forward to when I can replace Docker entirely.

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#545

Post by xylophile » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:27 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #513

jselysianeagle wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this problem usually solved by building an actual image for your specific application, tagging that and pushing to some docker repo? At least that's how it's been at placec I've worked at that used docker. What am I missing?

What do you do when you then actually need to make a change to your application (e.g. a 1-liner fix)? Edit the binary image?

You can always edit the file in the container and re-upload it with a different tag. That's not best practice, but it's not exactly sorcery.

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#546

Post by xylophile » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:31 AM UTC

Eduard wrote: post #480

gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They publish statically-linked binaries on GitHub [0], so to install it, you just need to download and unpack a single file. But you don't get any automatic updates like you would if they provided an apt repository. [0]: https://github.com/containers/podman/releases

how come there is no podman Linux installer?

You mean curl?

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#547

Post by nullify88 » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:38 AM UTC

Dennip wrote: post #165

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…

Not sure on docker desktops specifics but usually large companies have enterprise/business licencing available and specifically do not deal with this, and do not want to manually deal with this, because they can use SSO & dynamically assign licenses to user groups etc.

Or use Microsoft MyAccess to have the users allocate a license themselves.

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#548

Post by xylophile » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:41 AM UTC

rsyring wrote: post #371

dathinab wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> build/package Podman as part of their OS release process. But that is notoriously out-of-date. providing duplicate/additional non official builds for other OS is - undermining the OSes package curation - confusing for the user - cost additional developer time, which for most OSS is fairly limited - for non vendorable system dependencies this additional dev time cost can be way higher in all kinds of surprising ways…

> cost additional developer time, which for most OSS is fairly limited Mostly agree. But something like Podman w/ RedHat behind it is unlikely to be limited in the same way a lot of community OSS projects are. Unfortunately, I disagree with just about every other point you made but don't think it's worth responding point-by-point. In short, I think a project having dedicated builds for popular OSes is a win-win for j…

Trying to be genuinely helpful here:

After many years of "I want stability and evergreen", I finally realized that this is Fedora. Each release is very stable, and they arrive more often than once an eon.

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#549

Post by nullify88 » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:43 AM UTC

worik wrote: post #449

reaperducer wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some day I hope to work for a company small enough that I can "just" use any software I feel like for whatever reasons I want. But I have to feed my family.

> I can "just" use any software I feel like for whatever reasons I want. What could possibly go wrong?

For my day job, installing software / admin access is reserved to those who work in IT / software development. Rest of the business need to go through a vetted software library.

Re: I ditched Docker for Podman

#550

Post by xylophile » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:56 AM UTC

curt15 wrote: post #253

bonzini wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the main selling point is daemonless. For example, you put podman in a systemd unit and you can stop/start with systemctl without an external point of failure. Comparing root docker with rootless podman performance is apples to oranges. However, even for rootless pasta does have good performance.

Some tools talk to docker not using the docker CLI but directly through its REST API. Podman also exposes a similar REST API[1]. Is Podman with its API server switched on substantially different from the docker daemon? [1]. https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-system-serv...

Docker daemon runs as root, and runs continuously.

If you're running rootless Podman containers then the Podman API is only running with user privileges. And, because Podman uses socket activation, it only runs when something is actively talking to it.