I like the idea behind Podman, but it’s not a suitable drop in replacement for Docker yet. Especially since it requires manual setup to auto-start stacks at boot, and can’t import docker compose files easily.
Docker is easier to use, has many more examples and tutorials out there, and every project generally provides a docker compose file ready to go for quick setup.
If you’re just starting out and have never used containers before start with regular (rootful) docker. It’s a much simpler mechanism to understand for a beginner and has more widespread support and documentation.
Once you understand containers and have used them for a few months you can start going down the rabbit hole, there’s no shortage of technologies to explore.
Or, if you’re only interested in self-hosting as a hobby and docker does what you need, you can also stop there. Not everybody needs a deep dive into technology.
I learned podman as a beginner. This isn’t to say that what you’re saying is wrong. It was much more difficult doing so. I am only commenting to say that its possible but needs patience.
If docker works for you, then don’t change what’s not broken. If there are things you don’t like about docker (root access etc for example) then venture out and try others. At the end of the day, they’re just tools to get to the more interesting stuff — actually running applications and playing with them.
Cool. Thanks! One less reason for me to even consider Porman on the radar. Personally, I really don’t care for the tool itself, and am way more interested in the apps that I can run and play with :)
Yea, I contribute to a bunch of own source projects, so it makes it easy to jump around without conflicts. Also great for random stuff like youtube-dl, or esphome, etc, that you use once in a while. Just slap the aliases in my bashrc.
I would say Docker. There is no substantial benefit in running podman, while docker is a widely adopted tool (which means more tooling in the ecosystem, easier to find answers to questions etc.). The difference is not huge tbh, and some time ago the biggest advantage for podman was being able to run rootless, while docker was stuck with a root daemon. This is not the case anymore (docker can run rootless), so I would say unless you have some specific argument to use podman, stick with docker.
I would say podman by default. It has a better security architecture as it can run rootless.
However there are small differences from Docker so you may need use Docker if you are trying to run third-party services that rely on these differences.
If you don’t have strong opinions one way or the other, then docker is the easy answer. Way, way more widespread, which generally tends to mean better docs, more guides and examples, more tooling and open-source support…
Takes 1 minute to write a non systemd startup script, come on.
I understand systemd “spoiled” people, but not having a potentially insecure always running daemon for no purpose at all (docker) beat the alternative for me.
I think k8s is a different beast, that requires way more domain specific knowledge besides server/Linux basic administration.
I do run it, but it’s an evolution of a need, specifically when you want to manage a fleet of machines running containers.
To be honest, some kubernetes distributions make the cluster operations minimal (I use k0s managed via ansible)!
Either way, the moment you go from N containers on one box to N containers on M boxes you need to start considering how to handle stateful applications, load balancing, etc. And that in general requires knowledge on a domain which is different from having simply applications wrapped in containers locally.
I’ve tried Docker Swarm because Kubernetes seemed like an overkill for a cluster of 4 small-ish servers. There have been several issues (networking for example) that took me two days to solve - by reinstalling the machine completely.
There are some hoops and hurdles along the way, some command will just literally brick your cluster without any notice whatsoever (like removing the second manager, leaving only one and cluster stops responding, but you get no warning that’s gonna happen).
Also secrets, where there is no simple way to manage them, or replace them. You can’t just replace a secret, you have to remove and recreate it. Which means turning off the service or creating a new secret with a different name and do a rolling update, which is just annoying to do every time unless you can afford a robust CI CD pipeline code that does it automatically.
Podman is slightly better, but most tutorials are for docker.
So, podman if you’re comfortable looking through docs, man-pages, scarce Internet resources, and trial and error for finding things out. Especially if you care about having better security with rootless mode.
Podman also has a different way for managing many containers at once, and the interaction between them.
The Podman developers did contribute to Docker for a while before starting the project. Docker kept introducing issues and had some fundamentally bad design decisions that they didn’t want to change.
At least try to look into the history of these things before making broad and easily falsifiable statements.
Docker is a great choice with lots of good tutorials. I personally use podman since all my servers are now running Fedora server and podman is installed by default.
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I like the idea behind Podman, but it’s not a suitable drop in replacement for Docker yet. Especially since it requires manual setup to auto-start stacks at boot, and can’t import docker compose files easily.
Docker is easier to use, has many more examples and tutorials out there, and every project generally provides a docker compose file ready to go for quick setup.
There is now podman compose that can read and use docker-compose files. As for importing, I cannot tell.
If you’re just starting out and have never used containers before start with regular (rootful) docker. It’s a much simpler mechanism to understand for a beginner and has more widespread support and documentation.
Once you understand containers and have used them for a few months you can start going down the rabbit hole, there’s no shortage of technologies to explore.
Or, if you’re only interested in self-hosting as a hobby and docker does what you need, you can also stop there. Not everybody needs a deep dive into technology.
I learned podman as a beginner. This isn’t to say that what you’re saying is wrong. It was much more difficult doing so. I am only commenting to say that its possible but needs patience.
If docker works for you, then don’t change what’s not broken. If there are things you don’t like about docker (root access etc for example) then venture out and try others. At the end of the day, they’re just tools to get to the more interesting stuff — actually running applications and playing with them.
Just pointing out your response may be dated. Docker can run rootless: https://docs.docker.com/engine/security/rootless/
Cool. Thanks! One less reason for me to even consider Porman on the radar. Personally, I really don’t care for the tool itself, and am way more interested in the apps that I can run and play with :)
Agreed. Honesly I use docker like snap these days. Need a specific version of node?
Pretty much every CLI tool that isn’t super basic to install I do this with.
Wow, that’s really clever. And dead simple at the same time.
Yea, I contribute to a bunch of own source projects, so it makes it easy to jump around without conflicts. Also great for random stuff like youtube-dl, or esphome, etc, that you use once in a while. Just slap the aliases in my bashrc.
I would say Docker. There is no substantial benefit in running podman, while docker is a widely adopted tool (which means more tooling in the ecosystem, easier to find answers to questions etc.). The difference is not huge tbh, and some time ago the biggest advantage for podman was being able to run rootless, while docker was stuck with a root daemon. This is not the case anymore (docker can run rootless), so I would say unless you have some specific argument to use podman, stick with docker.
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I would say podman by default. It has a better security architecture as it can run rootless.
However there are small differences from Docker so you may need use Docker if you are trying to run third-party services that rely on these differences.
Docker can run rootless too, see https://docs.docker.com/engine/security/rootless/
Honestly I use docker because by now I know docker and basically everything has support for it…
If you don’t have strong opinions one way or the other, then docker is the easy answer. Way, way more widespread, which generally tends to mean better docs, more guides and examples, more tooling and open-source support…
Whichever one you want.
They both kind of suck in their own way.
If you want to things to run at startup and you’re not on systemd, rootless docker is probably easier.
Otherwise podman is mostly fine but be careful of native overlay if you’re not on BTRFS, this causes some pretty long build times.
Takes 1 minute to write a non systemd startup script, come on.
I understand systemd “spoiled” people, but not having a potentially insecure always running daemon for no purpose at all (docker) beat the alternative for me.
No love for kubernetes?
Kubernetes? I’ve never even seen her netes.
I think k8s is a different beast, that requires way more domain specific knowledge besides server/Linux basic administration. I do run it, but it’s an evolution of a need, specifically when you want to manage a fleet of machines running containers.
Even then, there’s dockerswarm.rocks (linking directly to tutorial to show how easy it is!)
I really thought swarm was dead :)
To be honest, some kubernetes distributions make the cluster operations minimal (I use k0s managed via ansible)!
Either way, the moment you go from N containers on one box to N containers on M boxes you need to start considering how to handle stateful applications, load balancing, etc. And that in general requires knowledge on a domain which is different from having simply applications wrapped in containers locally.
I’ve tried Docker Swarm because Kubernetes seemed like an overkill for a cluster of 4 small-ish servers. There have been several issues (networking for example) that took me two days to solve - by reinstalling the machine completely.
There are some hoops and hurdles along the way, some command will just literally brick your cluster without any notice whatsoever (like removing the second manager, leaving only one and cluster stops responding, but you get no warning that’s gonna happen).
Also secrets, where there is no simple way to manage them, or replace them. You can’t just replace a secret, you have to remove and recreate it. Which means turning off the service or creating a new secret with a different name and do a rolling update, which is just annoying to do every time unless you can afford a robust CI CD pipeline code that does it automatically.
Can be ott yeah. I set mine up to understand how it all works and just kept things going.
Podman is slightly better, but most tutorials are for docker.
So, podman if you’re comfortable looking through docs, man-pages, scarce Internet resources, and trial and error for finding things out. Especially if you care about having better security with rootless mode.
Podman also has a different way for managing many containers at once, and the interaction between them.
I use Docker exclusively. Podman is the NIH syndrome response to an industry standard. It has its benefits but Docker just works.
Podman wasn’t built due to NIH. Docker has real problems (though many have been fixed), and Podman was built to fix those.
Docker Engine is open source. They could’ve easily contributed patches to it which just further proves that it is a NIH syndrome response.
The Podman developers did contribute to Docker for a while before starting the project. Docker kept introducing issues and had some fundamentally bad design decisions that they didn’t want to change.
At least try to look into the history of these things before making broad and easily falsifiable statements.
Docker is a great choice with lots of good tutorials. I personally use podman since all my servers are now running Fedora server and podman is installed by default.
Podman rootless, using quadlets for systemd services. :D