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Show HN: Container Desktop – Podman Desktop Companion

464 points by istoica 2y ago

bradleyy 2y ago
While I'm basically fine with Colima on Mac, this seems like a nice alternative to Docker Desktop.
- veonik 2y ago
  After some initial pains with colima, I tend to agree. Mostly, just needing to specify some VZ args[0] so I could run x86_64 docker images on my M-series. Is there something in these desktop UIs that colima is completely missing? [0] `colima start --vm-type=vz --vz-rosetta`
  - fragmede 2y ago
    "some initial pains" = Colima VM running out of resources running kind, so I had to raise the CPU and RAM, and then raise the fd's in the VM itself to get it to work. but now it works!
  - cjauvin 2y ago
    Could this be the answer I needed to run an SQL Server image that refused to run on my M3 MBP? I was about to, sadly, try Docker Desktop, because of that.
    - veonik 2y ago
      That is exactly why I needed it, too! :D Be sure to increase RAM over the default 2GB as well, that SQL Server container is hungry and will crash without enough resources dedicated to it.
dmonitor 2y ago
what does this offer that podman desktop does not? https://podman-desktop.io/ https://podman-desktop.io/
- gnulinux 2y ago
  Last I checked podman's support of docker-compose.yml was very limited to say the least. Has it changed?
  - scheme271 2y ago
    What parts did you find lacking? I haven't had any issues using podman-compose to launch stuff using unmodified docker-compose.yml files.
  - mfenniak 2y ago
    There are two approaches to using compose w/ podman: Replace docker-compose with podman-compose -- somewhat limited capabilities, but works in a lot of cases. Use docker-compose against podman w/ podman's system service, which provides a docker compatible API endpoint (https://docs.podman.io/en/v5.2.1/markdown/podman-system-service.1.html https://docs.podman.io/en/v5.2.1/markdown/podman-system-serv...). This basically has full docker-compose capabilities, but, you do need run the socket service as a specific user account which end up running all the pods.
    - 3np 2y ago
      I found the most stable to be a third option: 'podman compose' with docker-compose-v2 cli "backend" connecting to the actual podman socket. This will be done if you run 'podman compose' with 'docker-compose' in PATH, and DOCKER_HOST set to your podman socke, since 'podman compose' will just shim through to whichever command it finds available. Both podman-compose (the Python project) and docker-compose-v1 have significant gaps in the compose spec.
  - EdwardDiego 2y ago
    Yeah, I'm using it and it's nearly everything I need.
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  What does podman desktop offer that WSL does not (at least for those of us on Windows)?
moondowner 2y ago
I've been using Rancher Desktop as an alternative to Docker Desktop, https://rancherdesktop.io/ https://rancherdesktop.io/ on macOS and Windows, it's pretty solid. It has some kinks to work out but I got it working with IDEs too (e.g. the Intellij IDEA Docker Compose integration to work with it). What I also like is that existing scripts and etc that use the docker-compose cli work with Rancher Desktop too, as it uses nerdctl https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl
- manojlds 2y ago
  Yup +1 for Rancher Desktop. Works as smooth as Docker Desktop on MacOS.
- SystemOut 2y ago
  We just completed the switch to Rancher where I work. 1200ish engineers, mostly on Macs. So far it's worked out pretty well..fewer hiccups than I expected.
  - justinclift 2y ago
    Does it use the same "containers are really just running in a Linux VM" approach as Docker Desktop on macOS?
    - 1oooqooq 2y ago
      unless you run osx on a Linux kernel, it will always be so. not a personal attack on you, but it blows my mind how clueless the current generation of developers become after the docker phase.
      - brianpan 2y ago
        I don't understand this comment on any level. Containers will only ever be on a linux kernel or VM? Never natively on ANY other OS? Only Linux containers exist? Developers were more clueful about containers before Docker made them wildly popular?
hnlmorg 2y ago
If you’re on macOS, then Orbstack is a nice alternative to Docker Desktop (I’m not affiliated with Orbstack)
- cweagans 2y ago
  Another enthusiastic +1 for OrbStack. It's fantastic.
  - throwanem 2y ago
    GPU support would be a real benefit, but for anything not needing that, Orbstack's become my strong preference.
    - cweagans 2y ago
      Is there anything you can actually _do_ with the Apple GPUs outside of macOS? I know the Asahi Linux person was working on a driver for it, but is it in a useful state?
      - rahen 2y ago
        Yes. In fact it's accelerated and supports OpenGL 4.6 while macOS tops at OpenGL 4.1, and really mostly only supports Metal nowadays. With Asahi you can use OpenGL and Vulkan. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/asahi-linux-projects-opengl-support-on-apple-silicon-officially-surpasses-apples/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/asahi-linux-projects...
        cweagans 2y ago
        Oh neat! Thanks for the tip!
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- alexandre_m 2y ago
samz 2y ago
Rancher desktop is fine. I did migration within 30 minutes.
koito17 2y ago
Looks cool, but how is the Kubernetes support? One of the major reasons we use Docker Desktop at work is to host a local Kubernetes cluster with services deployed there. We also support Rancher Desktop since it uses k3s, and k3s is arguably a nicer Kubernetes distribution than the one set up by Docker Desktop. With that said, I have recently tried OrbStack, and it is able to start up near instantly, while Kubernetes spends at most 2 seconds to start up. The UI is minimal, but it offers just enough to inspect containers, pods, services, logs, etc. It also is very lightweight on memory usage and battery. I personally cannot return to either Docker or Rancher Desktop after having tried OrbStack. OrbStack also allows using Kubernetes service domains directly on the host. So no need to use kubectl port-forward, and applications running on the host can use identical configuration to what's inside the Kubernetes cluster. The battery savings, dynamic memory usage, fast startup time, and QOL of OrbStack is pretty much my standard for a Docker Desktop alternative. I am not sure if container-desktop satisfies all of these requirements. (Rancher Desktop certainly doesn't)
- linkdd 2y ago
  You should check out https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/ https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/ and https://k0sproject.io https://k0sproject.io
  - leonheld 2y ago
    I love kind! Used it a lot when I was writing my thesis on Kubernetes schedulers.
    - arjvik 2y ago
      Curious to see your thesis!
      - leonheld 2y ago
        It's not much, just a simple bachelor thesis https://repositorio.ufsc.br/bitstream/handle/123456789/244953/one-true-monograph.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://repositorio.ufsc.br/bitstream/handle/123456789/24495.... I mostly wanted to provide a software/hardware playground for my advisors who were working on their own thesis about algorithms for energy-aware IoT edge deployments. The TLDR is that you can write algorithms to minimize various parameters within a Kubernetes cluster, like energy consumption.
forrestthewoods 2y ago
Personally I just build all my software so it includes its dependencies and then you don't need docker or any complex image manager. Don't rely on a bunch of crap being installed in the system path! Much much simpler this way imho.
- diego_sandoval 2y ago
  I think that's the right way to do it from the software distributor's side, but most software distributors don't do it like you. So, from a consumer's point of view, if you want to use their software, then docker is the lesser evil compared to all the others. Notably, it's much better than binaries with dynamic libraries that don't come included in the bundle itself.
  - candiddevmike 2y ago
    As a user, I'd rather use a container then figure out how to run a binary. The onboarding process is typically so much easier, and most enterprise folks already have container infrastructure in place. For big customers, getting a Kubernetes namespace can have significantly less friction than a VM these days.
    - forrestthewoods 2y ago
      > then figure out how to run a binary It should never be more complicated than "run the binary". Running programs shouldn't require infrastructure or VMs or Docker images. Deploying a program should be, and can be, as simple as sharing a zip file, extracting, and running. It's not that hard!
  - forrestthewoods 2y ago
    > better than binaries with dynamic libraries that don't come included in the bundle itself. Binaries should always include the dynamic libraries they require. Docker is one way to include them. But you can also just include them the vanilla way. Works great! Very easy and reliable.
- 2y ago
achristmascarl 2y ago
I've really enjoyed using Orbstack: https://orbstack.dev/ https://orbstack.dev/ it also has support for Linux VMs and kubernetes (although i haven't tried that yet)
Apreche 2y ago
Does it support VSCode Devcontainers? That's the only reason I haven't been able to switch to an alternative.
- gbraad 2y ago
  Is this supported by DD?
  - Apreche 2y ago
    Yes. It is the most supported option.
saghul 2y ago
I'm currently using colima, and none of the other alternatives that I have found support forwarding UDP ports, which I use a lot, so that's a bummer! Thankfully, lima has landed a new port forwarder with UDP support! [0]. I'm hoping to be able to use it soon once it makes into a release. [0]: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/commit/13e9cbcabc6a0a05ec3893f3e04283a13245c191 https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/commit/13e9cbcabc6a0a05ec389...
ekzy 2y ago
Honest question, what’s wrong with docker desktop? Looking at all the alternatives suggested it’s not clear to me why any other tools are better? I’m not using k8s locally, just docker compose. To connect to our remote k8s cluster, I use IntelliJ k8s extension (I just need to do some basic dev tasks, I’m not administrating the cluster)
- alx__ 2y ago
  For me, it was consuming so much memory. Switching to OrbStack helped fix that
  - bboygravity 2y ago
    FreeBSD jails? :p
- maxyurk 2y ago
  it's not free
- Andoryuuta 2y ago
  One big difference is the licensing. Docker Engine itself is apache licensed (and hence free to use at a company of any scale), but Docker Desktop requires a paid plan if your company has more than 250 employees or more than $10 million in annual revenue [0]. [0]: https://docs.docker.com/engine/#licensing https://docs.docker.com/engine/#licensing
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Which like, seems entirely fair, but when there are suitable enough replacements that cost $0, why pay for it? Sure there are big picture reasons, but companies often don't think that long-term.
    - otteromkram 2y ago
      Priority tech support when everything blows up is usually the number one reason.
istoica 2y ago
Kubernetes is planned - my devops wants me to add it badly! Author note - Most of you guys here are power users, for whom UI is a visual poem that you need or not. This is not a commercial project, it is not following any business goals. But this does not mean concessions to quality, it does try to offer minimal resource usage everywhere, easy experience, good UI/UX. It explains all it does behind the scenes if you enable the developer console. It can help one learn so at a certain moment one understands and automates with scripts and specs. But everyone these days is either seen as too smart or too dumb, I don't consider users like this. I know everyone started somewhere and a gradual learning experience is the best. I broke so many radios and toys when I was a kid and I learned so much, by looking at what was is inside. It is a project done by one dude, after work and when it rains outside (In Belgium it rains a lot).
- beepbooptheory 2y ago
  > But everyone these days is either seen as too smart or too dumb Vert succinct and poetic way to describe so much these days in this space.
- ljm 2y ago
  I never finished it, but I had a lot of fun documenting a basic-ass K8S (well, K3S) setup that costs about 20€/mo on Hetzner. You don't really learn about sysadmin through it, or even about docker that much, but you get an idea of how you might easily run a few different things on a server while only needing to know YAML, and not some custom DSL like chef or puppet.
  - thwarted 2y ago
    > only needing to know YAML, and not some custom DSL like chef or puppet. YAML may be a known syntax, but the use of it still requires domain specific knowledge, and is still a domain specific language expressing those domain specific concepts, as to what the expected keys and values are allowed to be and how they are interpreted.
    - ljm 2y ago
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
Why does Docker feel like it was designed by people with no Unix background?
- bityard 2y ago
  I don't know if your comment was intended to imply that Docker was against the Unix philosophy in some way (a debatable point, but not really one I share), or if you mean that the tools don't follow a lot of common Unix convension. When Docker was only a few years old, I did keep running into lots of small things which implied that the people developing docker in fact did NOT have a Unix (or even Linux) background. Things like source code files having the wrong type of newlines (or a mix of types), and forgetting to add a newline to the last line in a file. (A correct Unix text file has a newline at the end of _every_ line, even the last one.) There were of course more giveaways than this, I just remember the newline stuff irritating me the most.
  - jve 2y ago
    Why is newline at the end relevant? I remember not having a newline breaks some tools... but why? It can't be because of unix philosophy!?
    - mook 2y ago
      Some old tools had bugs where they'd read a line (up to the new line) and then process it, so if the last line didn't end with a new line they'd never do the processing. So a manual workaround for bugs became the convention.
      - paulv 2y ago
        Back in ~2002 this was the case with cron. Found out the hard way when all the backup tapes we desperately needed were completely empty.
      - bityard 2y ago
        No, that is not a bug and there was never such a thing as "manually" adding a trailing newline. All tools add newlines automatically where they should be. Unix has ALWAYS defined a line of text as being terminated by a newline. The last line in the file is not an exception.
ape4 2y ago
Is it ok to run the Windows version on a normal desktop (not in a VM). Does it uninstall cleanly. Thx
- istoica 2y ago
  Yes, get it from Microsoft Store, it is digitally signed, autoupdates and offers you the best windows experience.
leoqa 2y ago
Orthogonal rant: Podman allows host mounts during image build, whereas docker does not. Ran into a big headache where a monorepo using podman leveraged this to create container images from source and the equivalent docker implementation had to copy the monorepo into the docker build context every time. We needed to use Docker for M1 support (probably should've tried Colima, etc).
- jmholla 2y ago
  I may be wrong, but I think BuildKit gives Docker that functionality.
- nine_k 2y ago
  I'd bind-mount the tree into the context. (I assume Docker won't follow simple symlinks.)
- taspeotis 2y ago
  https://docs.docker.com/reference/dockerfile/#run---mount https://docs.docker.com/reference/dockerfile/#run---mount
ademup 2y ago
Is Ubuntu 24.04 supported? (Docker Desktop doesn't support 24.04 currently)
- istoica 2y ago
  It is what I am using, so by default, yes!
wg0 2y ago
colima + docker CLI goes a long way. $ colima start $ docker context use colima And that's it. And Kubernestes? No thank you, life is already hard as is.
- dewey 2y ago
  Every time I tried Colima it stopped working after a few days. Not just for me either. Back to Docker Desktop which never gave me a single issue in many years.
mococa 2y ago
+1 for OrbStack.
mococa 2y ago
Is another crap electron app?
- istoica 2y ago
  Author of the project here, yes! - electron done well is amazing, try to write a cross platform gui app in a RAD way these days with other tech. I am experienced in flutter too and would still stick to the curent stack. Maybe one day when text engine is better in flutter i would port it. You cant be that cross platform, cross os, cross arch with anything better than electron these days. Electron done well shouldn’t create any problems.
jpace121 2y ago
I would also encourage people to look at Podman desktop which has pretty good support from Red Hat. https://podman-desktop.io/ https://podman-desktop.io/
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  support from red hat is not a good thing :nervouslaughteremoji
dzonga 2y ago
how is this different from the usual podman client ?
- istoica 2y ago
  Author: It isn’t, if you are a power user, the podman client should provide all you need. It also supports docker too. The difference is that this is a GUI, like Docker Desktop, but unlike it, batteries are not included. I dont dislike DD, but to each their own.
jlos 2y ago
My team switched our medium sized org over to Rancher Desktop with no major issues after about 10 months. We don't need kubernetes though.
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
It's not fully baked. Sigh - Buggy as heck with bad error messages. - Bad UX with inadequate help. - Requires extra tweaking and installing more stuff to get going, which defeats its entire purpose. - Confusing. - Can't browse or choose tags of images. It's not a viable alternative yet, but maybe it will improve sometime in the future.
- istoica 2y ago
  Creating some tickets would help improve what you find problematic. I understand your frustration, you would want it to just work , but life isn’t always how we want it to be either. It is a free and open source project, no hidden goals, driven only by passion and love for tech.
- knowitnone 2y ago
  not affiliated with the project but thanks for the feedback! Now they have some more items in their TODO list which will make their product better.
rednafi 2y ago
Orbstack
nerdponx 2y ago
Nice! Unfortunately I got this error upon opening the Mac app: Uncaught Exception: TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'setImage') at NativeTheme.<anonymous> (file:///Applications/Container%20Desktop.app/ Contents/Resources/app.asar/build/main-5.2.3.mjs:22:537771) at NativeTheme.emit (node:events:519:28) Nothing seems to be wrong, but that was surprising. Also, it's not obvious from the site that Container Desktop does bundle Podman along wit it, unlike Docker Desktop. The analogy with the latter and the subtitle "Podman Desktop Companion" on the site made me think it might include a bundled Podman installation. That said I do like the idea, and I'm definitely looking forward to trying it. For context, I'm not a Kubernetes user, mostly just Compose and plain `docker run` for ad-hoc things.
- istoica 2y ago
  Thanks, just released 5.2.4 to address the flatpak issue you mention above. I am sorry for that, it is extremely hard to support so many formats on linux. I am documenting myself as much as I can to be able to publish to flatpak hub, but there is a lot to get to do it properly.
  - nerdponx 2y ago
    I understand that packaging cross platform apps is hard. Just note that I was talking about the MacOS package, not Flatpak.
    - istoica 2y ago
      It was the same issue, solved for mac also.
      - nerdponx 2y ago
        Unfortunately FYI now the ARM64 app is now rejected by MacOS Sonoma on my M1, saying it's "damaged" and can't be opened. However the x86 version seems to work, presumably under Rosetta.
TechSquidTV 2y ago
I saw this, I think posted here the other day, looked interesting. https://github.com/ajayd-san/gomanagedocker https://github.com/ajayd-san/gomanagedocker A TUI alternative.
- istoica 2y ago
  I like TUIs a lot too, they work great for remote connections and just feel good. I even mention one in the Readme of the repo, maybe some could create an awesome tui tools type of page for container management UIs
v3ss0n 2y ago
For none gui, lazydocker is perfect
snapplebobapple 2y ago
Tangentially unrelated side queation: how do you make nfs mounts work in podman without running it as root and making running podman over docker kind of pointless or what do you use to share a base fileayatem from somewhere else on the network to a docker container that isnt nfs or samba?
- lozf 2y ago
  Maybe these blog posts¹² from Red Hat will help. I haven't tried yet, just found these earlier. ¹: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/rootless-podman-nfs https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/rootless-podman-nfs ²: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/nfs-rootless-podman https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/nfs-rootless-podman
  - snapplebobapple 2y ago
    I dont think thats quite it. I have nfs mounts defined in my compose files. I.e in the container /media is an volume docker creates from an nfs mount defined in the docker compose. That dodnt work withpout podman having root last i checked a few years ago

464 points by istoica 2y ago

bradleyy 2y ago

While I'm basically fine with Colima on Mac, this seems like a nice alternative to Docker Desktop.

veonik 2y ago
After some initial pains with colima, I tend to agree. Mostly, just needing to specify some VZ args[0] so I could run x86_64 docker images on my M-series. Is there something in these desktop UIs that colima is completely missing? [0] `colima start --vm-type=vz --vz-rosetta`
- fragmede 2y ago
  "some initial pains" = Colima VM running out of resources running kind, so I had to raise the CPU and RAM, and then raise the fd's in the VM itself to get it to work. but now it works!
- cjauvin 2y ago
  Could this be the answer I needed to run an SQL Server image that refused to run on my M3 MBP? I was about to, sadly, try Docker Desktop, because of that.
  - veonik 2y ago
    That is exactly why I needed it, too! :D Be sure to increase RAM over the default 2GB as well, that SQL Server container is hungry and will crash without enough resources dedicated to it.

dmonitor 2y ago

what does this offer that podman desktop does not? https://podman-desktop.io/ https://podman-desktop.io/

gnulinux 2y ago
Last I checked podman's support of docker-compose.yml was very limited to say the least. Has it changed?
- scheme271 2y ago
  What parts did you find lacking? I haven't had any issues using podman-compose to launch stuff using unmodified docker-compose.yml files.
- mfenniak 2y ago
  There are two approaches to using compose w/ podman: Replace docker-compose with podman-compose -- somewhat limited capabilities, but works in a lot of cases. Use docker-compose against podman w/ podman's system service, which provides a docker compatible API endpoint (https://docs.podman.io/en/v5.2.1/markdown/podman-system-service.1.html https://docs.podman.io/en/v5.2.1/markdown/podman-system-serv...). This basically has full docker-compose capabilities, but, you do need run the socket service as a specific user account which end up running all the pods.
  - 3np 2y ago
    I found the most stable to be a third option: 'podman compose' with docker-compose-v2 cli "backend" connecting to the actual podman socket. This will be done if you run 'podman compose' with 'docker-compose' in PATH, and DOCKER_HOST set to your podman socke, since 'podman compose' will just shim through to whichever command it finds available. Both podman-compose (the Python project) and docker-compose-v1 have significant gaps in the compose spec.
- EdwardDiego 2y ago
  Yeah, I'm using it and it's nearly everything I need.
candiddevmike 2y ago
What does podman desktop offer that WSL does not (at least for those of us on Windows)?

moondowner 2y ago

I've been using Rancher Desktop as an alternative to Docker Desktop, https://rancherdesktop.io/ https://rancherdesktop.io/ on macOS and Windows, it's pretty solid. It has some kinks to work out but I got it working with IDEs too (e.g. the Intellij IDEA Docker Compose integration to work with it). What I also like is that existing scripts and etc that use the docker-compose cli work with Rancher Desktop too, as it uses nerdctl https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl

manojlds 2y ago
Yup +1 for Rancher Desktop. Works as smooth as Docker Desktop on MacOS.
SystemOut 2y ago
We just completed the switch to Rancher where I work. 1200ish engineers, mostly on Macs. So far it's worked out pretty well..fewer hiccups than I expected.
- justinclift 2y ago
  Does it use the same "containers are really just running in a Linux VM" approach as Docker Desktop on macOS?
  - 1oooqooq 2y ago
    unless you run osx on a Linux kernel, it will always be so. not a personal attack on you, but it blows my mind how clueless the current generation of developers become after the docker phase.
    - brianpan 2y ago
      I don't understand this comment on any level. Containers will only ever be on a linux kernel or VM? Never natively on ANY other OS? Only Linux containers exist? Developers were more clueful about containers before Docker made them wildly popular?

hnlmorg 2y ago

If you’re on macOS, then Orbstack is a nice alternative to Docker Desktop (I’m not affiliated with Orbstack)

cweagans 2y ago
Another enthusiastic +1 for OrbStack. It's fantastic.
- throwanem 2y ago
  GPU support would be a real benefit, but for anything not needing that, Orbstack's become my strong preference.
  - cweagans 2y ago
    Is there anything you can actually _do_ with the Apple GPUs outside of macOS? I know the Asahi Linux person was working on a driver for it, but is it in a useful state?
    - rahen 2y ago
      Yes. In fact it's accelerated and supports OpenGL 4.6 while macOS tops at OpenGL 4.1, and really mostly only supports Metal nowadays. With Asahi you can use OpenGL and Vulkan. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/asahi-linux-projects-opengl-support-on-apple-silicon-officially-surpasses-apples/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/asahi-linux-projects...
      - cweagans 2y ago
        Oh neat! Thanks for the tip!
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
alexandre_m 2y ago

samz 2y ago

Rancher desktop is fine. I did migration within 30 minutes.

koito17 2y ago

Looks cool, but how is the Kubernetes support? One of the major reasons we use Docker Desktop at work is to host a local Kubernetes cluster with services deployed there. We also support Rancher Desktop since it uses k3s, and k3s is arguably a nicer Kubernetes distribution than the one set up by Docker Desktop. With that said, I have recently tried OrbStack, and it is able to start up near instantly, while Kubernetes spends at most 2 seconds to start up. The UI is minimal, but it offers just enough to inspect containers, pods, services, logs, etc. It also is very lightweight on memory usage and battery. I personally cannot return to either Docker or Rancher Desktop after having tried OrbStack. OrbStack also allows using Kubernetes service domains directly on the host. So no need to use kubectl port-forward, and applications running on the host can use identical configuration to what's inside the Kubernetes cluster. The battery savings, dynamic memory usage, fast startup time, and QOL of OrbStack is pretty much my standard for a Docker Desktop alternative. I am not sure if container-desktop satisfies all of these requirements. (Rancher Desktop certainly doesn't)

linkdd 2y ago
You should check out https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/ https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/ and https://k0sproject.io https://k0sproject.io
- leonheld 2y ago
  I love kind! Used it a lot when I was writing my thesis on Kubernetes schedulers.
  - arjvik 2y ago
    Curious to see your thesis!
    - leonheld 2y ago
      It's not much, just a simple bachelor thesis https://repositorio.ufsc.br/bitstream/handle/123456789/244953/one-true-monograph.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://repositorio.ufsc.br/bitstream/handle/123456789/24495.... I mostly wanted to provide a software/hardware playground for my advisors who were working on their own thesis about algorithms for energy-aware IoT edge deployments. The TLDR is that you can write algorithms to minimize various parameters within a Kubernetes cluster, like energy consumption.

forrestthewoods 2y ago

Personally I just build all my software so it includes its dependencies and then you don't need docker or any complex image manager. Don't rely on a bunch of crap being installed in the system path! Much much simpler this way imho.

diego_sandoval 2y ago
I think that's the right way to do it from the software distributor's side, but most software distributors don't do it like you. So, from a consumer's point of view, if you want to use their software, then docker is the lesser evil compared to all the others. Notably, it's much better than binaries with dynamic libraries that don't come included in the bundle itself.
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  As a user, I'd rather use a container then figure out how to run a binary. The onboarding process is typically so much easier, and most enterprise folks already have container infrastructure in place. For big customers, getting a Kubernetes namespace can have significantly less friction than a VM these days.
  - forrestthewoods 2y ago
    > then figure out how to run a binary It should never be more complicated than "run the binary". Running programs shouldn't require infrastructure or VMs or Docker images. Deploying a program should be, and can be, as simple as sharing a zip file, extracting, and running. It's not that hard!
- forrestthewoods 2y ago
  > better than binaries with dynamic libraries that don't come included in the bundle itself. Binaries should always include the dynamic libraries they require. Docker is one way to include them. But you can also just include them the vanilla way. Works great! Very easy and reliable.
2y ago

achristmascarl 2y ago

I've really enjoyed using Orbstack: https://orbstack.dev/ https://orbstack.dev/ it also has support for Linux VMs and kubernetes (although i haven't tried that yet)

Apreche 2y ago

Does it support VSCode Devcontainers? That's the only reason I haven't been able to switch to an alternative.

gbraad 2y ago
Is this supported by DD?
- Apreche 2y ago
  Yes. It is the most supported option.

saghul 2y ago

I'm currently using colima, and none of the other alternatives that I have found support forwarding UDP ports, which I use a lot, so that's a bummer! Thankfully, lima has landed a new port forwarder with UDP support! [0]. I'm hoping to be able to use it soon once it makes into a release. [0]: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/commit/13e9cbcabc6a0a05ec3893f3e04283a13245c191 https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/commit/13e9cbcabc6a0a05ec389...

ekzy 2y ago

Honest question, what’s wrong with docker desktop? Looking at all the alternatives suggested it’s not clear to me why any other tools are better? I’m not using k8s locally, just docker compose. To connect to our remote k8s cluster, I use IntelliJ k8s extension (I just need to do some basic dev tasks, I’m not administrating the cluster)

alx__ 2y ago
For me, it was consuming so much memory. Switching to OrbStack helped fix that
- bboygravity 2y ago
  FreeBSD jails? :p
maxyurk 2y ago
it's not free
Andoryuuta 2y ago
One big difference is the licensing. Docker Engine itself is apache licensed (and hence free to use at a company of any scale), but Docker Desktop requires a paid plan if your company has more than 250 employees or more than $10 million in annual revenue [0]. [0]: https://docs.docker.com/engine/#licensing https://docs.docker.com/engine/#licensing
- fragmede 2y ago
  Which like, seems entirely fair, but when there are suitable enough replacements that cost $0, why pay for it? Sure there are big picture reasons, but companies often don't think that long-term.
  - otteromkram 2y ago
    Priority tech support when everything blows up is usually the number one reason.

istoica 2y ago

Kubernetes is planned - my devops wants me to add it badly! Author note - Most of you guys here are power users, for whom UI is a visual poem that you need or not. This is not a commercial project, it is not following any business goals. But this does not mean concessions to quality, it does try to offer minimal resource usage everywhere, easy experience, good UI/UX. It explains all it does behind the scenes if you enable the developer console. It can help one learn so at a certain moment one understands and automates with scripts and specs. But everyone these days is either seen as too smart or too dumb, I don't consider users like this. I know everyone started somewhere and a gradual learning experience is the best. I broke so many radios and toys when I was a kid and I learned so much, by looking at what was is inside. It is a project done by one dude, after work and when it rains outside (In Belgium it rains a lot).

beepbooptheory 2y ago
> But everyone these days is either seen as too smart or too dumb Vert succinct and poetic way to describe so much these days in this space.
ljm 2y ago
I never finished it, but I had a lot of fun documenting a basic-ass K8S (well, K3S) setup that costs about 20€/mo on Hetzner. You don't really learn about sysadmin through it, or even about docker that much, but you get an idea of how you might easily run a few different things on a server while only needing to know YAML, and not some custom DSL like chef or puppet.
- thwarted 2y ago
  > only needing to know YAML, and not some custom DSL like chef or puppet. YAML may be a known syntax, but the use of it still requires domain specific knowledge, and is still a domain specific language expressing those domain specific concepts, as to what the expected keys and values are allowed to be and how they are interpreted.
  - ljm 2y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

Why does Docker feel like it was designed by people with no Unix background?

bityard 2y ago
I don't know if your comment was intended to imply that Docker was against the Unix philosophy in some way (a debatable point, but not really one I share), or if you mean that the tools don't follow a lot of common Unix convension. When Docker was only a few years old, I did keep running into lots of small things which implied that the people developing docker in fact did NOT have a Unix (or even Linux) background. Things like source code files having the wrong type of newlines (or a mix of types), and forgetting to add a newline to the last line in a file. (A correct Unix text file has a newline at the end of _every_ line, even the last one.) There were of course more giveaways than this, I just remember the newline stuff irritating me the most.
- jve 2y ago
  Why is newline at the end relevant? I remember not having a newline breaks some tools... but why? It can't be because of unix philosophy!?
  - mook 2y ago
    Some old tools had bugs where they'd read a line (up to the new line) and then process it, so if the last line didn't end with a new line they'd never do the processing. So a manual workaround for bugs became the convention.
    - paulv 2y ago
      Back in ~2002 this was the case with cron. Found out the hard way when all the backup tapes we desperately needed were completely empty.
    - bityard 2y ago
      No, that is not a bug and there was never such a thing as "manually" adding a trailing newline. All tools add newlines automatically where they should be. Unix has ALWAYS defined a line of text as being terminated by a newline. The last line in the file is not an exception.

ape4 2y ago

Is it ok to run the Windows version on a normal desktop (not in a VM). Does it uninstall cleanly. Thx

istoica 2y ago
Yes, get it from Microsoft Store, it is digitally signed, autoupdates and offers you the best windows experience.

leoqa 2y ago

Orthogonal rant: Podman allows host mounts during image build, whereas docker does not. Ran into a big headache where a monorepo using podman leveraged this to create container images from source and the equivalent docker implementation had to copy the monorepo into the docker build context every time. We needed to use Docker for M1 support (probably should've tried Colima, etc).

jmholla 2y ago
I may be wrong, but I think BuildKit gives Docker that functionality.
nine_k 2y ago
I'd bind-mount the tree into the context. (I assume Docker won't follow simple symlinks.)
taspeotis 2y ago
https://docs.docker.com/reference/dockerfile/#run---mount https://docs.docker.com/reference/dockerfile/#run---mount

ademup 2y ago

Is Ubuntu 24.04 supported? (Docker Desktop doesn't support 24.04 currently)

istoica 2y ago
It is what I am using, so by default, yes!

wg0 2y ago

colima + docker CLI goes a long way. $ colima start $ docker context use colima And that's it. And Kubernestes? No thank you, life is already hard as is.

dewey 2y ago
Every time I tried Colima it stopped working after a few days. Not just for me either. Back to Docker Desktop which never gave me a single issue in many years.

mococa 2y ago

+1 for OrbStack.

mococa 2y ago

Is another crap electron app?

istoica 2y ago
Author of the project here, yes! - electron done well is amazing, try to write a cross platform gui app in a RAD way these days with other tech. I am experienced in flutter too and would still stick to the curent stack. Maybe one day when text engine is better in flutter i would port it. You cant be that cross platform, cross os, cross arch with anything better than electron these days. Electron done well shouldn’t create any problems.

jpace121 2y ago

I would also encourage people to look at Podman desktop which has pretty good support from Red Hat. https://podman-desktop.io/ https://podman-desktop.io/

1oooqooq 2y ago
support from red hat is not a good thing :nervouslaughteremoji

dzonga 2y ago

how is this different from the usual podman client ?

istoica 2y ago
Author: It isn’t, if you are a power user, the podman client should provide all you need. It also supports docker too. The difference is that this is a GUI, like Docker Desktop, but unlike it, batteries are not included. I dont dislike DD, but to each their own.

jlos 2y ago

My team switched our medium sized org over to Rancher Desktop with no major issues after about 10 months. We don't need kubernetes though.

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

It's not fully baked. Sigh - Buggy as heck with bad error messages. - Bad UX with inadequate help. - Requires extra tweaking and installing more stuff to get going, which defeats its entire purpose. - Confusing. - Can't browse or choose tags of images. It's not a viable alternative yet, but maybe it will improve sometime in the future.

istoica 2y ago
Creating some tickets would help improve what you find problematic. I understand your frustration, you would want it to just work , but life isn’t always how we want it to be either. It is a free and open source project, no hidden goals, driven only by passion and love for tech.
knowitnone 2y ago
not affiliated with the project but thanks for the feedback! Now they have some more items in their TODO list which will make their product better.

rednafi 2y ago

Orbstack

nerdponx 2y ago

Nice! Unfortunately I got this error upon opening the Mac app: Uncaught Exception: TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'setImage') at NativeTheme.<anonymous> (file:///Applications/Container%20Desktop.app/ Contents/Resources/app.asar/build/main-5.2.3.mjs:22:537771) at NativeTheme.emit (node:events:519:28) Nothing seems to be wrong, but that was surprising. Also, it's not obvious from the site that Container Desktop does bundle Podman along wit it, unlike Docker Desktop. The analogy with the latter and the subtitle "Podman Desktop Companion" on the site made me think it might include a bundled Podman installation. That said I do like the idea, and I'm definitely looking forward to trying it. For context, I'm not a Kubernetes user, mostly just Compose and plain `docker run` for ad-hoc things.

istoica 2y ago
Thanks, just released 5.2.4 to address the flatpak issue you mention above. I am sorry for that, it is extremely hard to support so many formats on linux. I am documenting myself as much as I can to be able to publish to flatpak hub, but there is a lot to get to do it properly.
- nerdponx 2y ago
  I understand that packaging cross platform apps is hard. Just note that I was talking about the MacOS package, not Flatpak.
  - istoica 2y ago
    It was the same issue, solved for mac also.
    - nerdponx 2y ago
      Unfortunately FYI now the ARM64 app is now rejected by MacOS Sonoma on my M1, saying it's "damaged" and can't be opened. However the x86 version seems to work, presumably under Rosetta.

TechSquidTV 2y ago

I saw this, I think posted here the other day, looked interesting. https://github.com/ajayd-san/gomanagedocker https://github.com/ajayd-san/gomanagedocker A TUI alternative.

istoica 2y ago
I like TUIs a lot too, they work great for remote connections and just feel good. I even mention one in the Readme of the repo, maybe some could create an awesome tui tools type of page for container management UIs

v3ss0n 2y ago

For none gui, lazydocker is perfect

snapplebobapple 2y ago

Tangentially unrelated side queation: how do you make nfs mounts work in podman without running it as root and making running podman over docker kind of pointless or what do you use to share a base fileayatem from somewhere else on the network to a docker container that isnt nfs or samba?

lozf 2y ago
Maybe these blog posts¹² from Red Hat will help. I haven't tried yet, just found these earlier. ¹: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/rootless-podman-nfs https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/rootless-podman-nfs ²: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/nfs-rootless-podman https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/nfs-rootless-podman
- snapplebobapple 2y ago
  I dont think thats quite it. I have nfs mounts defined in my compose files. I.e in the container /media is an volume docker creates from an nfs mount defined in the docker compose. That dodnt work withpout podman having root last i checked a few years ago