Docker or Podman¶
Docker made software container technology popular. Since then, the Open Container Initiative has made it more widely available, on more runtimes.
On Linux, there are a few ways to do this:
- Run Docker as a system service.
- Run Docker Desktop, which will start a virtual machine and a UI.
- Run Podman, which uses a "non-daemon" approach, and Podman Desktop as UI.
| Docker | Docker Desktop | Podman | |
|---|---|---|---|
| UI | None, only command line options. | App to manage containers, images, and volumes, look at logs, run a terminal, and more. | App to manage containers, images, and volumes, look at logs, run a terminal, and more. |
| Availability | You need to run the Docker daemon (but not Docker Desktop), to make containers available. | You need to run Docker Desktop to make containers available. | You don't need to run Podman Desktop (or a deamon) to make containers available. |
| Host system | Integrates natively in Linux, as a service. | Runs a Virtual Machine in which the containers run: slower to start up. | Integrates natively in Linux, but without requiring a root-level daemon. |
| Host user | Can run as root or as a non-root user | Typically runs as non-root user. | Typically runs as non-root user. |
| Container user | TBC | Container root mapped to local host non-root. | Container root mapped to local host non-root. |
| Ubuntu compatibilty | Standard Ubuntu package. | Newest Docker Desktop apps not yet supported on newest Ubuntu (25.04) | Podman Desktop runs ok. |
| My choice | I currently work with Podman and Podman Desktop. |
Docker experiences¶
- I used Docker Desktop before, hoping to make my experiences useful across platforms, but experienced some Linux-specific problems that made that harder.
- Docker Desktop was not really keeping up with new Ubuntu releases (in 2025), and I also didn't like the extra start-up time for the Virtual Machine before my containers would run.
Podman experiences¶
- It should be possible to use Podman as desktop application to work with Docker native containers. However, I wanted to try the full switch to Podman.
- Podman Desktop has no CPU or memory utilisation indicators for individual containers.
- VS Code features don't work in Podman, see my devcontainer setup.