EDIT: For some context, I recently gave podman another go. I have a few services on my homelab server set up in docker containers, so I tried migrating to podman.
After the second major bug (open issue on github) I encountered looked like it would require completely dropping using compose files to work around, I gave up and went back to docker.
I like the idea of podman, but it’s just not stable. I’ll try again in a year or so.
As a bonus, docker’s CLI is significantly nicer.
I choose Podman bc it’s open source and that’s kind of the reason for using everything as a container bc those are often also open source. Fuck docker
Also it’s more secure and performant as it’s rootless and daemonless.
What exactly is your problem with Docker? It’s open source.
Also closed-source container images exist.
Haha idk, nothing really. Just found a lot of recommendations over Docker for podman.
It also can integrate with Systemd via Quadlets. Let’s you control containers as a sytemd service. I personally use them for my home server and have been happy with it.
The learning curve for quadlets is quite harsh in my opinion. I started with podman compose 3 years ago for my homelab, because it allowed user containers.
I tried to migrate to quadlets unsuccessfully, several times over the years. it was only recently that my self-hosted Qwen was capable enough to figure out where I was messing up and automate the process a bit.
I probably wasn’t sufficiently motivated. It felt like podman compose is basically docker compose, but quadlets are a quite a bit different in form and function, so I was never able to grok them:
There is a tool named Podlet that can help translate to quadlets. I was able to fully translate my unraid and compose setups to quadlets.
I remember trying it and my compose files blew up to multiple Quadlet files with a much larger total size (lines of code). I find that compose is just more concise and structured compared to Quadlets.
It does have a larger file size compared to compose, sure. The big advantage of quadlets is that systemd will handle things in the event of a failure. It makes it a great option for production environments where you will not need to update your config files as much. It also allows you to have more control over when each application starts, if they rely on a specific disk mount or service running on the system. I’m sure someone else can provide more benefits who use them in a production environment.
Fair enough. My requirements are simply: start all services when the machine has finished booting. And I can’t remember the last time my system failed. Most that happened was a power outage, and Quadlets wouldn’t have helped there either.
So in my case I much prefer simple and easy-to-read configs, over the complexity of integrating with systemd.
Docker compose definitely works for most people, so I would feel pressured to swap.
There is one instance where Quadlets would have fixed an issue we ran into at work. We had a Kafka instance whose container died and went away because we ran out of space on the server. Compose doesn’t recreate containers on failure, so I was called in to fix the issue. Quadlets treats containers as disposable, so it would have recreated it as soon as it went away. The root of the issue was a bad logging config that we fixed on the next business day.
Isn’t it just
restart: alwaysin the config? Unless you’re talking about podman, where you also need thepodman-restartsystemd service.Are u running podman containers on Unraid or did you migrate away?
I migrated from docker containers on Unraid to using quadlets on RockyLinux. The Podlet utility helped a bit with taking an existing docker container and converting it to a quadlet. Also did thorough testing in a VM before swapping my server.
Interesting, just migrated away from Unraid myself. But chose Proxmox -> Debian -> Podman Containers instead. Any reason in particular you chose Rocky?
The security of Rocky is solid and RL 10 is supported for quite a long time. I’m also used to RHEL based systems at work, as we target Red Hat.
That being said, I wouldn’t recommend it for most people. SELinux can be annoying to deal with and can cause issues where it isn’t obvious that SELinux is the cause.
If I were to chose again, I would probably just pick Debian as most of my workloads are just running in containers or VMs. The only services running on the host are NFS and Samba.
Wtf I thought docker was foss. Fml man
If you install the GUI it literally won’t let you open it unless you agree to their telemetry…
The GUI is not technically “Docker”. It’s made by Docker the company but it doesn’t use the same runtime engine, because it’s meant for non-Linux OS which don’t have it. It uses whatever the host OS has in place as an alternative.
Ah ok, that doesn’t affect me but still, what a bummer
Docker is foss. Docker desktop and docker sbx are not.
Are you sure about that? I see Copyright at the bottom (maybe the name) and is free only for personal tier, everything else costs money. Maybe some of the containers are open source per https://www.docker.com/products/trusted-content/open-source/ but I don’t see where it says anywhere that the actual software that is docker is OSS let alone FOSS.
The core of Docker is called Moby, which is open source on GitHub. So are docker-cli and compose
Ah, explains the whale!
It’s FOSS, but not Libre, and more close to open-core than to open source.
The version that is installable from the repositories of Linux distros is all open source. Docker itself, the container engine and runtime are all open source. Nobody cares about stuff like docker desktop or docker sbx, not only are they not critical to the software itself, they aren’t that useful or valuable.
I don’t mean Docker Desktop, I mean docker-cli and moby.
Just because something has a FOSS license and is open-sourced in some code forge doesn’t mean that it effectively respects some (or even all) of the four freedoms.
The version you get from Debian does respect all four freedoms.
It’s licensed Apache 2.0, which has been acknowledged as FOSS by the EFF.
Yeah, but I can use the license on my software but not respect that license at all… That’s what I mean. A license itself is nothing if the actions of the developer aren’t corresponding to it.
It can’t be FOSS but not Libre, the Free in FOSS means Libre. And it also can’t be FOSS but not opensource, of course.
No, Free means “Gratis”, or “Free as in Free Beer”, Libre means “Free as in Freedom”. That’s why FLOSS is recommended to be used instead FOSS, because the latter can be prone to confusion.
It also works better sooo
Also, does Docker do rootless containers yet?
It does, but it seems like it’s still a bit of an afterthought. But it’s getting better.
Still tho, podman is fine and I like the project as an alternative to docker.
Docker rootless has been more stable for me than podman