Have you tried LXC? It runs entire distros as containers, with init and everything.

It looks a bit confusing. There’s LXC, LXD and Incus. I should look for Incus, right?

Seems a bit less popular and supported, I also like that Podman has strong backing from Red Hat and potentially seamless macOS integration.

Otherwise if Podman will fail I’ll take a look at Incus.