No idea why Docker is still so much more popular than Podman. Podman is obviously the better implementation.

The new network stuff is a welcome improvement.

I’d wager it’s mainly just that deployment is mildly more annoying and requires more disparate steps.

Especially if you want to go rootless (and you should).

For someone that isn’t “Linux first” (like a baby developer learning to containerize their apps), the idea of dealing with systemd unit files or kublet configs, and having to created dedicated local service accounts (and remembering to enable linger) is somewhat intimidating when compared to just installing docker, whipping up a docker compose file and pressing “start”.

I understand why they’ve taken this approach but it’s pretty clunky and a bit unfriendly.

Last time I checked podman compose was only a superficial docker compose equivalent. Also stuff like inotify seems to randomly break a lot on the podman side.

I'd love to be able to recommend people use podman but not having a good docker compose compatibility and missing inotify on volumes makes the DX just too problematic.

I think a stronger brand name. Also on macOS I found Docker Desktop to be more straightforward. Also lately it has been very error prone. Randomly failing at mounting files, or cleaning up networking rules, or suddenly becoming bog slow so I have to restart the VM.

Podman on macOS feels miles less refined. Orbstack is a way better choice.

I only use podman on Linux and there it is blazing fast. Even so, most features seem to be geared to be able to replace kubernetes in combination with systemd. And then something simple as docker compose support is flaky and it’s TUI/ux lags behind the original.

I gave up on Podman for some minor reasons: one was that they decided to deviate from Docker and handle SELinux differently, which required effort to change the SELinux security labels on a stock Centos system. That made it a no go.

The other issue is minor differences from Docker, but small enough that a packaged up Docker compose doesn’t work out of the box. It’s not a good use of my time to debug that when I could just switch to Docker, have it work, and get on with my day.

One advantage of Docker is reliable host-to-container file change notifications, allowing tools like Vite inside the container to detect changes. Podman and many alternatives don’t handle this well for our web development on macOS.

Not even Tart or Apple Container support it, as far as I know. Maybe someone has found a way.

Just today, I tried to run docker compose on a remote host via podman-docker on Fedora (Asahi). I ran into all sorts of buildx issues, and the easiest fix for me was to remove podman and install docker instead.

I tried working through it with Claude, but after a few failed attempts I gave up. I'd like to use podman, but the docker compose + buildx compatibility gaps made it more trouble than it was worth for now. I'm definitely going to try it again.

This was about a year ago, but I had trouble getting podman to add an nvidia GPU so that the container could use it. It was technically possible (I succeeded) but it was annoying and "different".

Last time I evaluated podman, Ubuntu was second class citizen. Rootless was non trivial and required additional setup. Documentation also suck.

Docker is something we all already hate, milion edge cases and forever bugs but at least well documented and understood. Podman claim to be drop-in replacement does it mean it carry docker shitness? Examples: ufw punch through, env file handling, volumes, etc

In many places it doesn't matter, because cheap companies don't want to even hear about Docker, so one gets to choose between podman, rancher, and if on Windows wslc is going to be a thing.

Docker (the company) lost the plot in Linux containers, OCI got standardized, alternative runtimes came to be, and very few companies actually care to pay for Docker Desktop or the other services they sell.

They really upset me with how they introduced it initially, and I haven't looked at it since.

Redhat swapped in podman and removed docker, and all of the config/images/scripts I had spend 2 years making stopped working on new/replacement hosts... So I had to spend a lot of time in meetings/filling out paperwork to get docker back. I haven't forgiven Redhat for dropping that shitty experience on my head.

Fuse overlayfs was noticeably slower than Docker's overlayfs setup. Maybe there's a way to reconfigure but I haven't checked lately.

I think it was Zig (building ghostty) was broken in podman with obscure "unknown file" errors. Turns out that was lack of fuse-overlayfs supporting some attributes it was trying to check.

It's random, little things like that which keep biting me every time I try to make the switch. I use it for simple stuff though.

I went all in on podman compose last year but went all back because off constant permission errors. I thought it was going to be better than docker because I run the containers as a user… but man the amount of time I wasted on files that either I or the container itself or some other container couldn’t read… With docker I felt that stuff just works.

And then there are the extra steps: Enable user lingering, make a systemd service that starts the compose containers (and there is nothing really “native”, it’s a script.) With Docker compose containers just restart if you say so in the file.

There are many great things about podman, will try again in a year or so perhaps?

> No idea why Docker is still so much more popular than Podman. Podman is obviously the better implementation.

docker-compose is one big reason. The networking aspect of it still isn't feature-compatible compared to using docker. I keep trying podman+docker-compose again every 6–9 month, and there's also some issue that makes it unfeasible for my use case.

Its IPv6 implementation is also broken, and connections from the host to the container are dropped if the host doesn't have a public IPv6 address (WTF!?). I reported this in June 2024 (#22959). Not being able to reach an HTTP server on a podman container from my host when I'm offline is ridiculous.

Lots and lots of tiny little bugs and quirks which are a nuisance to deal with. With docker, everything just works.

Another recent bug I hit was that the value of the environment variable TMPDIR and XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is persisted to disk with podman's internal state. After a reboot, if either of those has changed, nothing works because podman tries to use directories that don't exist. This… seems to be due to workarounds for wildly broken setups.

I've reported many of these bugs, and have a backlog of a lot more that I haven't bothered to report yet.

What honestly really surprises me is how many people actually manage to use podman for work despite all its issues.

Default stickiness, tbh.

A few years ago, I started moving towards Podman when it got to that "good enough" point on both Linux and macOS and when Docker started to remind people about Docker Desktop that it needed a license for commercial use.

Even then, it took around a year or so to transition.

I ran into an issue I couldn't figure out how to solve with podman. Some of the testcontainers my test suites would run wouldn't start in time causing tests to fail locally. Switching back to docker desktop solved the problem.

One answer is ECR/ECS/Fargate ie AWS. You’re not gonna split the ops stories between local and remote.

Because they don't publish up to date packages for major distros.

Isn't Docker is basically a front end to containerd, the most common k8s container runtime? One could just as well ask why use a completely separate container stack just for local development when docker shares the same business end as the prod environment.

I never liked Docker, but someone pointed out to me that Podman is backwards compatible, doesn't need root, and even has simulated docker commands if you need them so you can just alias podman to docker... and voila same experience, so every online tutorial works just fine.

it has a stronger brand, probably because it was created first. I still hear the term "docker container" (sometimes).

Colima just seems to be easier to work with using Docker.

Devcontainers work without having to pass special arguments and deal with inconsistent stuff once in the devcontainer itself.

K3d is easier to work with Docker.

Docker locally just makes sense.

PaaS like render.com explicitly support Docker.

As a developer, I wager that any gains I get from Podman will be dwarfed by bugs that I’m encountering in the other software I use.

I’m not implying that Podman causes the bugs. I’m saying that I’ll be more likely to be the first person to encounter the bug.

Yeah, a great developer I know showed me how he could use it to get a safe dev container for Claude Code, in a way that wasn't doable with Docker.

For the company I work at, it’s primarily inertia. We started using containers with Docker. And then it just continued. We are two out of 20+ developers who would like to use Podman, but the rest is just ”eh, why bother?”. And I don’t fully fault them for holding that position, Docker generally works. Why switch to something which may or may not provide some benefit (most which will be indirect such as better security and setup)? I still continue to mention Podman regularly though …

We need to popularize a "podman btw" meme based on the arch meme.

So any time people talk about docker someone can go:

I use podman btw

Most people simply do not care. They just want a Dockerfile to become an image, and they want to run that image. I use both... rootless podman is nice. Although the promise of ez systemd integration is a bit... oversold. I use it with systemd however with my own hand-crafted unit files. Pretty good combo.

Brand.

"OCI container" doesn't have same ring, unfortunately.

And most Podman things are just clones of Docker, e.g. Containerfile. In a clone situation, the original brand will always have the staying power.

I mean for local dev I like that I can just press one button and have Kubernetes available. Podman Desktop had something approaching that simplicity but I have found Docker Desktop more stable in my limited experience with it.

I used rancher + podman on Windows. Mainly Rancher. The last 8 months I use exclusively Podman + Podman Desktop. Rancher has a slightly better desktop app and can manage podman.