4 ms·

I've seen podman advertised as a dropin docker replacement. how valid is that assertion?

by htrp 1y ago

jamesboehmer 1y ago
I wasted my time trying podman and switched to colima. It's the only usable free alternative that's a true drop-in replacement for docker.
- stock_toaster 1y ago
  colima is great. I've also had good luck with rancher-desktop too.
  - ahoka 1y ago
    RD is colima + some other stuff. I prefer vanilla colima (also works on Linux!)
GauntletWizard 1y ago
I had a brief period of setup pain and then have never looked back, though have occasionally wished that feature parity came a little quicker. Podman is in many ways a delight, simpler in what it does in the general case and yet as powerful as docker or more.
dodos 1y ago
Mostly valid. There are a few gotchas but for most use cases it is drop-in. I think I've run into issues with the podman socket, and there were some permissions problems I had getting games-on-whales setup in userspace.
scuff3d 1y ago
I almost never notice the difference. I know there are some edge cases that will get you, but I've never run into them.
demonshreder 1y ago
It almost is, the first change you'd see is understanding that each container is a separate process and thus for it to auto start you'd need to generate systemd service files. podman has an autogenerator for this, so it is 'just' two extra commands on the terminal but something easy to miss when you are starting out.
- aitchnyu 1y ago
  What would you do for a Docker Compose stack with Podman? For example, a self hosted app where the actual service, Postgres, Redis live?
  - bootsmann 1y ago
    Docker compose can work with a podman backend, however if you want a more podman native solution the term you should be looking for is quadlet which is basically systemd files that run the containers.
riedel 1y ago
I use podman desktop on Windows for common development stuff as drop in replacement. I switched due to licensing as I guess universities do not fall under the licencing exceptions. I actually also use the docker CLI, particularly docker compose. I was motivated to do the same on one of our Debian vms, because I could more install podmap via standard apt sources, i hoped that it doesn't mess to that much with the IP stack and it is a bit closer to K8s which I still deemed as overkill. However, trying to install e.g. komo.do via podman compose was a total fail. Even after fixing socket locations, etc, I would see weird behavior. So yes, it is a clear 'almost'. However, the critical cases can become easily very frustrating. Again, on my windows laptop with WSL2 it works like a charm, but there I also do not run server deployments that need to work reliably out of the box.
sigseg1v 1y ago
Worked for me for a long time until I found the samba-ad image won't run on podman. Worked fine on the same machine with docker. Everything else has been working as a drop-in replacement.

I've seen podman advertised as a dropin docker replacement. how valid is that assertion?

by htrp 1y ago

I've seen podman advertised as a dropin docker replacement. how valid is that assertion?

I wasted my time trying podman and switched to colima. It's the only usable free alternative that's a true drop-in replacement for docker.

stock_toaster 1y ago
colima is great. I've also had good luck with rancher-desktop too.
- ahoka 1y ago
  RD is colima + some other stuff. I prefer vanilla colima (also works on Linux!)

GauntletWizard 1y ago

I had a brief period of setup pain and then have never looked back, though have occasionally wished that feature parity came a little quicker. Podman is in many ways a delight, simpler in what it does in the general case and yet as powerful as docker or more.

dodos 1y ago

Mostly valid. There are a few gotchas but for most use cases it is drop-in. I think I've run into issues with the podman socket, and there were some permissions problems I had getting games-on-whales setup in userspace.

scuff3d 1y ago

I almost never notice the difference. I know there are some edge cases that will get you, but I've never run into them.

demonshreder 1y ago

It almost is, the first change you'd see is understanding that each container is a separate process and thus for it to auto start you'd need to generate systemd service files. podman has an autogenerator for this, so it is 'just' two extra commands on the terminal but something easy to miss when you are starting out.

aitchnyu 1y ago
What would you do for a Docker Compose stack with Podman? For example, a self hosted app where the actual service, Postgres, Redis live?
- bootsmann 1y ago
  Docker compose can work with a podman backend, however if you want a more podman native solution the term you should be looking for is quadlet which is basically systemd files that run the containers.

riedel 1y ago

I use podman desktop on Windows for common development stuff as drop in replacement. I switched due to licensing as I guess universities do not fall under the licencing exceptions. I actually also use the docker CLI, particularly docker compose. I was motivated to do the same on one of our Debian vms, because I could more install podmap via standard apt sources, i hoped that it doesn't mess to that much with the IP stack and it is a bit closer to K8s which I still deemed as overkill. However, trying to install e.g. komo.do via podman compose was a total fail. Even after fixing socket locations, etc, I would see weird behavior. So yes, it is a clear 'almost'. However, the critical cases can become easily very frustrating. Again, on my windows laptop with WSL2 it works like a charm, but there I also do not run server deployments that need to work reliably out of the box.

sigseg1v 1y ago

Worked for me for a long time until I found the samba-ad image won't run on podman. Worked fine on the same machine with docker. Everything else has been working as a drop-in replacement.