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How to Replace Docker with Podman on a Mac

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Re: How to Replace Docker with Podman on a Mac

#71

Post by nprateem »

JeremyNT wrote: post #53
afarrell wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So without a revenue model, how would they pay someone to maintain it if the current maintainer[s] need to focus on family or paying their mortgage?

It's from RedHat/IBM. They can give this stuff away to developers because they just want to sell OpenShift to deep pocketed Enterprise customers. And really podman is strategically a defensive move so their Enterprise offerings aren't stuck depending on Docker Inc. Contrast with Docker, whose business is explicitly focused on "developer tools."

So podman is funded ultimately by enterprises which is OK, but now docker wants to fund their products by enterprises that's a problem for some reason...

I could understand this if they were turning the thumbscrews on individuals but all this talk of switching sounds petty and silly and will probably be false economy

Re: How to Replace Docker with Podman on a Mac

#72

Post by nprateem »

Spivak wrote: post #54
afarrell wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is podman’s revenue model? I am perplexed by the conclusion that charging enterprise customers $5/user-month makes the product’s future less secure.

Because the future of the product now depends on the enterprise customers paying enough for it to not only fund the development but also fund the business backing it. OSS works best when software is needed by many different enterprises that all need it for their business but it isn’t a direct revenue generator. Because then the future is guaranteed since all of those enterprises will contribute patches and it makes f…

No idea how you came to that conclusion. Do you really think they'll survive without a way of using docker on Macs ? This is an extra revenue stream

Re: How to Replace Docker with Podman on a Mac

#73

Post by chousuke »

nprateem wrote: post #71
JeremyNT wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's from RedHat/IBM. They can give this stuff away to developers because they just want to sell OpenShift to deep pocketed Enterprise customers. And really podman is strategically a defensive move so their Enterprise offerings aren't stuck depending on Docker Inc. Contrast with Docker, whose business is explicitly focused on "developer tools."

So podman is funded ultimately by enterprises which is OK, but now docker wants to fund their products by enterprises that's a problem for some reason... I could understand this if they were turning the thumbscrews on individuals but all this talk of switching sounds petty and silly and will probably be false economy

I suspect it's the bait-and-switch approach that annoys people. Podman (and RHEL, through community rebuilds) is free to use even for enterprises; you don't pay for the software itself, you pay for support.

Re: How to Replace Docker with Podman on a Mac

#74

Post by znpy »

gizdan wrote: post #24
suchar wrote: post #16

Is there any practical benefit of Podman over Docker on a Mac? Virtual machine is still needed, so any performance issues are likely to persist (well, maybe Docker for Mac is a bit more buggy, but we can manually setup Docker instead of Podman in a similar way). Also, I think we are losing here access to the Docker socket on the host (inside the virtual machine it can be emulated using docker-podman).

Podman does have a socket that can be started. I use it on Linux so I'm not sure how that works on MacOS but it's API is Docker compatible, thus works with the docker cli and docker-compose as well.

The podman socket can be used to connect stuff to podman.

For example, a GUI program or even docker-compose.

However I must admit that I'm having serious troubles with podman+docker-compose (rhel 8.4, podman 3.2.3) so I reverted to podman-compose (which is way lower in quality and completeness).

Re: How to Replace Docker with Podman on a Mac

#75

Post by znpy »

nprateem wrote: post #71
JeremyNT wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's from RedHat/IBM. They can give this stuff away to developers because they just want to sell OpenShift to deep pocketed Enterprise customers. And really podman is strategically a defensive move so their Enterprise offerings aren't stuck depending on Docker Inc. Contrast with Docker, whose business is explicitly focused on "developer tools."

So podman is funded ultimately by enterprises which is OK, but now docker wants to fund their products by enterprises that's a problem for some reason... I could understand this if they were turning the thumbscrews on individuals but all this talk of switching sounds petty and silly and will probably be false economy

The problem is that red hat wants to monetize on "the big stuff" that is enterprise level software with support, subscription and consulting.

Docker Inc wants to monetize on the basic stuff (e.g. a dumb desktop UI)

Re: How to Replace Docker with Podman on a Mac

#77

Post by BlackFingolfin »

williamsmj wrote: post #9

My understanding is that this old article is no longer the simplest/easiest way of doing this. For that, see https://marcusnoble.co.uk/2021-09-01-migrating-from-docker-t... . tl;dr: $ brew install podman $ podman machine init $ podman machine start $ alias docker=podman If you're on an M1 you may run into https://github.com/containers/podman/issues/10577 (which is WIP, and may have been resolved by https://github.com…

I think also this podman blog post from a few days ago is relevant: https://podman.io/blogs/2021/09/06/podman-on-macs.html

Re: How to Replace Docker with Podman on a Mac

#78

Post by bloopernova »

nprateem wrote: post #71
JeremyNT wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's from RedHat/IBM. They can give this stuff away to developers because they just want to sell OpenShift to deep pocketed Enterprise customers. And really podman is strategically a defensive move so their Enterprise offerings aren't stuck depending on Docker Inc. Contrast with Docker, whose business is explicitly focused on "developer tools."

So podman is funded ultimately by enterprises which is OK, but now docker wants to fund their products by enterprises that's a problem for some reason... I could understand this if they were turning the thumbscrews on individuals but all this talk of switching sounds petty and silly and will probably be false economy

There was already some bad feeling towards Docker, because they historically haven't fixed bugs or added requested features.

When Docker started asking for money for their desktop offering, it prompted people to start wondering just how valuable that offering was, and to compare it against competing applications. Also, a lot of developers I've spoken to just don't see the point of the Docker Desktop on Mac; they just want something that sits in the background and works without bugging them to update every other week.

Podman fits the use cases people have, it's open source and has more useful features than Docker Desktop currently has.

You're correct in that this sounds petty and silly, but there's history and context to this widespread move to ditch Docker.

Re: How to Replace Docker with Podman on a Mac

#79

Post by bloopernova »

znpy wrote: post #75
nprateem wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So podman is funded ultimately by enterprises which is OK, but now docker wants to fund their products by enterprises that's a problem for some reason... I could understand this if they were turning the thumbscrews on individuals but all this talk of switching sounds petty and silly and will probably be false economy

The problem is that red hat wants to monetize on "the big stuff" that is enterprise level software with support, subscription and consulting. Docker Inc wants to monetize on the basic stuff (e.g. a dumb desktop UI)

Exactly, and lots of developers don't need a desktop UI. They just want something that sits in the background and gets out of their way.

Re: How to Replace Docker with Podman on a Mac

#80

Post by JeremyNT »

nprateem wrote: post #71
JeremyNT wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's from RedHat/IBM. They can give this stuff away to developers because they just want to sell OpenShift to deep pocketed Enterprise customers. And really podman is strategically a defensive move so their Enterprise offerings aren't stuck depending on Docker Inc. Contrast with Docker, whose business is explicitly focused on "developer tools."

So podman is funded ultimately by enterprises which is OK, but now docker wants to fund their products by enterprises that's a problem for some reason... I could understand this if they were turning the thumbscrews on individuals but all this talk of switching sounds petty and silly and will probably be false economy

> I could understand this if they were turning the thumbscrews on individuals but all this talk of switching sounds petty and silly and will probably be false economy

Well, with respect to this post in particular, I don't think Podman is even a "real" replacement for Docker Desktop. RHAT has been pushing it for quite a while, and although they're dogfooding it with their own k8s and Linux distros it's had less uptake outside of Big Blue (the linked article, prominently featured on their web page, is already out of date - not a good look). As many rough edges as my Mac using colleagues described encountering with Docker Desktop, they will see even more if they try to use Podman, so it strikes me as a poor choice here.

Regardless, I think the value proposition of Docker Desktop is questionable. The main thing it does is manage some VM plumbing so you don't have to think about it. Is that worth... much? Even anything at all? In a past life many of us used Vagrant, and it's not like it's that hard to do this stuff yourself.

So really, Docker Desktop is competing on multiple fronts, all of which are open source or at least free. There's old school, with Vagrant/BYO VM, there's "docker alternatives" like podman, and there's the k8s-in-a-box like Rancher Desktop or Minikube (which can expose a docker socket so you can work with docker directly as well).

I'm a Linux user so I don't have a dog in this fight, but if I lived in a world where I needed "run a VM to get a docker for development" it's not obvious to me that Docker Desktop is the best choice at any price point, and the cost is just one more point against it.

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