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Podman or Docker?
Currently, I use Docker and Docker Compose to host the vast majority of my services, across all my chickens, there are probably more than 40 such stacks.
recently I have experimented with Podman; to ensure a smooth transition, I am currently using podman-compose—though I am aware that this is not the solution officially recommended by Podman.
My current points of interest are Podman's daemonless architecture (though I don't really care much about that) and its extremely user-friendly rootless containers—which is the feature I appreciate most, especially given the increasing number of supply chain poisoning incidents we've seen in the "Vibe Coding" era.
If I choose not to use a "compatibility layer" like podman-compose, I would need to migrate my services to a configuration syntax such as Quadlet; however, I am unsure whether this transition process would prove to be a painful one.
I would appreciate hearing about some real-world experiences to help me determine whether it is worth the time and effort to fully migrate from Docker to Podman.
- Docker34 votes
- Podman58.82%
- K8s/K3s17.65%
- Others(Plz tell me)23.53%
Comments
docker
docker
over past years, as I become familiar with the Docker, I have found that whenever I deploy a service, I often have to make increasingly extensive modifications to the
compose.ymlconfiguration file—specifically to minimize privilege scope and enhance security as much as possible.While the process of configuring Docker's Rootless mode can be somewhat tedious, for the vast majority of open-source services, Docker remains the most widely adopted solution among hobbyists and general users.
Consequently, to spare myself from this persistent hassle, I am currently considering whether I should make this transition sooner rather than later.
Thats the point of a docker compose file is that you write it once, then - unless some modifications are needed, new volume etc - you don't touch it, it is reusable. That alone is not a good reason imo to switch to podman especially since, as you said it too, it is the most widely used amongst hobbyists, in general, and in enterprise too.
What @Rubben said
What @barbarza said
Podman quadlet
Podman.
Test with podman compose, later on just let it run as quadlet.
(And this in most cases also stuffed into incus container)
🤔
docker
Podman Quadlet creates from the configs systems (user) units (and keeps them up to date.)
So it's docker compose to test it, convert it to quadlets and system handles the rest.
You're talking to a dinosaur!
Transitioning from Docker to Podman is just the next step in evolution!
goood idea!
nexxxxt step is Kubernetes?
K3S / K8S is my personal choice!
LXC
You can continue to use docker-compose with Podman by enabling its Docker-compatible API socket.
https://oneuptime.com/blog/post/2026-03-17-configure-podman-socket-docker-compose/view
Podman, just because it doesn't mess up my precious handwritten nftables rules
incus lxc
Too old now, who uses nft, just provider firewall or no firewall....
Podman because quadlets and rootless containers.
Provider firewall is good enough for simple filtering but you can do NAT, packet mangling, ratelimits and other fun stuff with nftables.
why not rootless docker?
docker, cause you never know when server might get a reboot.
Personally, I still use Docker because it's simpler.
Docker
Is it? More overhead you get with docker.. But all else?
podman compose up -d
How do you maintain the quadlets if you want IaC?
Last time (4 years ago) I tried rootless to run a torrent client and ~50 containers overall I would see packets dropped randomly. That didn't happen when running as root. From my (limited) understanding it was the slirp4netns library running single-threaded.