Any time I always read how to accomplish something in podman-land , the action takes like 5 extra steps compared to docker, is probably an experimental feature that’s not supported and is always from a non-official source or some random blog.
In my limited experience, when Podman seems more complicated than Docker, it’s because the Docker daemon runs as root and can by default do stuff Podman can’t without explicitly giving it permission to do so.
99% of the stuff self-hosters run on regular rootful Docker can run with no issues using rootless Podman.
Rootless Docker is an option, but my understanding is most people don’t bother with it. Whereas with Podman it’s the default.
Docker is good, Podman is good. It’s like comparing distros, different tools for roughly the same job.
Pods are a really powerful feature though.
In my limited experience, when Podman seems more complicated than Docker, it’s because the Docker daemon runs as root and can by default do stuff Podman can’t without explicitly giving it permission to do so.
Can’t argue with that. There’s some truth to this.
99% of the stuff self-hosters run on regular rootful Docker can run with no issues using rootless Podman.
If this figure was even close to being remotely true, everyone would have moved to rootless containers by now.
Rootless Docker is an option, but my understanding is most people don’t bother with it. Whereas with Podman it’s the default.
These two share the same set of problems. People don’t want to downgrade from a “working” docker to a rootless “safer” docker that comes with more usability headaches.
Docker is good, Podman is good. It’s like comparing distros, different tools for roughly the same job.
Not really. The two are really different underneath but on surface they may look like they are overlapping solutions to the untrained eye.
Pods are a really powerful feature though.
Last time I was giving podman a try, I didn’t find anything really special about pods. Maybe it just didn’t click for me or I was not the intended audience.
on surface they may look like they are overlapping solutions to the untrained eye.
You’ll need to elaborate on this, since AFAIK Podman is literally meant as a replacement for Docker. My untrained eye can’t see what your trained eye can see under the surface.
I use podman because it’s more secure. I’m willing to put in the extra effort so that all my services aren’t running as root. If it turns out a vulnerability is discovered in lemmy tomorrow that allows people to access my server through my lemmy container, the attacker will only have access to a dummy account that hosts my containers. Yes, they could stop all my containers, but they can’t delete the volumes or any other data on my server.
Podman might have a “more secure” design but you can run the docker daemon as rootless. Podman itself is not immune to vulnerabilities and will not solve all your security problems.
Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good. Security is not all or nothing. Reducing the attack surface is still important.
Can you elaborate on running docker daemon as rootless? It’s my understanding that you can add your account to a group to access the docker daemon rootless, but the containers are still running as root, as the daemon itself raises the access to root.
If you make something with Podman yourself it is actually less work most of the time (the OP tutorial is incredibly convoluted for no reason).
But sure, if someone else did all the work for you and you just need to download the docker-compose file and run it, that is of course less work for you. But that is just a result of Docker’s relative popularity compared to Podman.
If you make something with Podman yourself it is actually less work most of the time (the OP tutorial is incredibly convoluted for no reason).
Doubt.
OP’s guide is simply describing how podman is designed to work. With systemd unit files for managing services.
But sure, if someone else did all the work for you and you just need to download the docker-compose file and run it, that is of course less work for you. But that is just a result of Docker’s relative popularity compared to Podman.
Why re-invent the wheel?
Doubt.
Cool attitude. In my experience, most docker/docker-compose setups will work transparently with podman/podman-compose. If you want to tighten security, lock down ressource access, run rootless (daemon and inside the container), integrate with SELinux, then you might need to put in extra-work, just like you would if you used docker.
Why re-invent the wheel?
They aren’t. Podman is mostly just a docker-compatible CLI wrapper around an existing OCI runtime (runc by default). It also lets you manage pods and export k8s yaml, which is arguably the more important industry standard at this point. Podman was also completely usable in rootless mode way before Docker support for that was on the table, which was the main reason I switched years ago. Podman development effort also yielded buildah, which is a godsend if you want to build container images in a containerized environment, without granting docker socket access (which is a security nightmare) or using some docker in docker scenario (which is just a nightmare in general).
I think he’s referring to the fact that it’s mixed in with a bunch of CoreOS setup stuff. I also thought the same of this tutorial. I use podman myself but I have no interest in CoreOS. It was a bit difficult trying to extract just the podman related stuff out of that tutorial.
Yes, but only 10% or so of the article is about what you actually need to know to use Quadlet and the rest is some convoluted mess that I don’t know why the author bothered with sharing that.
