8 ms·

Podman Desktop 1.6 released: Even more Kubernetes and Containers features

139 points by twelvenmonkeys 3y ago

filereaper 3y ago
Podman is still considered experimental with KinD clusters. I wish more efforts were spent getting better integration with KinD clusters as they're much easier to spinup and work with.
- stevanLM 3y ago
  What do you find easier to work with compared to minikube? As for the easiness to spinup, minikube also introduced a way to spinup a cluster in a container - so it's as smooth and simple than Kind. https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/drivers/podman/ https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/drivers/podman/ and https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/drivers/docker/ https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/drivers/docker/
candiddevmike 3y ago
I can't find what the underlying OS is on the website, how do you know what version it is/how is the underlying OS updated?
- FPGAhacker 3y ago
  It’s an application that can run on Mac, Linux, or Windows.
  - TheFuzzball 3y ago
    They're probably talking about the Linux VM that hosts the containers.
    - mruszczyk 3y ago
      By default it's using Fedora CoreOS.
- heffer 3y ago
  "By default, the VM distribution is Fedora CoreOS except for WSL which is based on a custom Fedora image. While Fedora CoreOS upgrades come out every 14 days, the automatic update mechanism Zincata is disabled by Podman machine." Source: https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-machine-init.1.html https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-machine-ini...
cpressland 3y ago
I might look at switching our users over to Podman, considerably less bloat than Docker Desktop. Installing Docker Desktop is a PITA via MDM as it requires the user to have admin rights on first launch (unless they follow additional steps)
enragedcacti 3y ago
Does anyone have resources or advice for someone interested in podman as a replacement for docker-compose? There is a lot I like about podman but my previous exposure to kubernetes felt extremely complicated for my use cases. Most of the time my docker-compose projects only need to run on one or two machines without much horizontal scaling or fault tolerance and portability/ease of spin-up are more important than high 9s edge cases. If that's my use case should I just stick with docker-compose, or does podman simplify kubernetes config enough that its worth considering the switch? I'd like the flexibility of being able to deploy to a k8s cluster if the cost is cheap in terms of mental overhead and how easy it is for another developer to pick up and run with.
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  https://developers.redhat.com/e-books/podman-action https://developers.redhat.com/e-books/podman-action
- worldsayshi 3y ago
  I'm not sure how podman fits into this thought but I feel what's needed to make kubernetes as easy to use as docker-compose is a bunch of sane defaults for things that you mostly don't want to care about for smaller projects. And then maybe an option to easily "eject" the configuration when the project grows. There has to be some attempt at this right?
  - vbezhenar 3y ago
    Can you clarify what's hard about using kubernetes for smaller projects and what do you want to omit?
    - jasonjayr 3y ago
      helm + go-templating in YAML is pure madness. I've found k8s more manageable with straight manifests, or tooling to generate the manifests from some other source. I do need to give jsonnet a hard look, as I hear it's less crazy than yaml+templates
goalieca 3y ago
I'm a very happy podman user. It works really well to run amd64 containers on aarm64 thanks to qemu and it also has great modern features like rootless.
- mati365 3y ago
  I made even podman quadlet ansible template for that (excluding x86 emulation part). It is dead simple and easy to fix. https://github.com/Mati365/hetzner-podman-bunjs-deploy https://github.com/Mati365/hetzner-podman-bunjs-deploy
jasonjayr 3y ago
IIRC, on windows, podman(+ docker) desktop create a Linux HyperV VM, and run the containers on that. As a Linux native dropped into Windows, I've already been able to bring up docker, podman, k8s, and anything else in linux with more control over the linux VM I've created. What does the 'Desktop' version of docker or podman bring to windows, that I don't already have by shelling into my on-device VM and using docker/podman tools directly?
- pjmlp 3y ago
  We love graphical tools, and usually leave the CLI for scripting automation. Also, Windows containers do matter in some environments, and they are exposed via the Docker APIs.
- never_inline 3y ago
  They exist for the same reason several git GUIs and Kubernetes dashboards exist.
- drdaeman 3y ago
  Podman on Windows creates a WSL2 distribution (`podman-machine-default` or whatever name one had picked shows up in `wsl --list` right next to other "normal" GNU/Linux distros), it doesn't create any VMs in Hyper-V sense (that show up in Get-VM or HyperV GUI tools). So, essentially, it's an automation that sets up stuff in WSL for you, plus creates some interoperability from the Windows side such as Docker API named pipe or podman CLI. Nothing you can't do yourself, if you want to do it yourself. Plus it bundles with those extensions like pre-setup dev Kubernetes or whatever, if you care about those.
pxc 3y ago
Just recently set up Podman Desktop on Mac for work (on my old computer, I'd used Rancher Desktop on Windows). Getting everything installed was a little bit annoying, since I use a nonstandard Homebrew prefix, and Homebrew doesn't currently provide a 'cask' for the pre-built Podman binaries. That means that `brew install --cask podman-desktop` requires building a bunch of things from source for me. But writing one wasn't hard, and the install process was good after that. One issue I seem to have consistently though is that the VM `podman machine` uses hangs. I haven't investigated it, but I think it might hang every time my laptop sleeps, because it's most often hung when I come back to my computer in the mornings, and that seems so damn near every time. Anyone else have this problem on macOS?
- Blehmo 3y ago
  I was hoping not to read your comment because thats the reason why i stoped playing around with podman. The frustration of the background VM having some issues on my mac made me switch to paid docker again. I don't have the time to play around with something which i need for work and costs 10$ per month. And i do prefer opensource
  - pxc 3y ago
    It looks like this might be the issue: https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/334 https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/334 I wouldn't think that qemu would be associated with a display in the required way here, but maybe being launched by a GUI app that's not a terminal emulator is somehow enough? Related bug affecting Lima (blocked by this one): https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/issues/2 https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/issues/2 This is the first I'd heard of 'app nap'. I guess macOS does iOS things and actively freezes apps it thinks are idle. Maybe it has to do this to get passable battery life during sleep, now that Macs don't actually sleep (S3) anymore?
  - hocuspocus 3y ago
    My employer stopped paying for Docker Desktop licenses but I never really understood the appeal in the first place, we definitely faced some issues with our enterprise setup (proxy and registry mirrors, nothing out of the ordinary for a big company). Colima works pretty well, and documenting a reproducible setup is easy. If I were willing to spend my own money, I'd pick OrbStack.
TrickardRixx 3y ago
I like to develop with VS Code and devcontainers. I've never been able to get that setup to work with podman as the backend. Has anyone successfully done this or perhaps know of a blog detailing how to accomplish this that I haven't been able to find?
- tedheath123 3y ago
  Yes, I have docker as an alias to root podman and VS Code is able to build a devcontainer with it. Rootless also works but was a lot slower for me. There are a couple of minor incompatibilities I've noticed in other areas: * Podman doesn't have a unix socket like /var/run/docker.sock but it can be set up with podman-system-service if needed. * Some applications check if /.dockerenv exists. They shouldn't, but you can just touch a file there to work around it.
- zamalek 3y ago
  I think I did at one point. Podman is 1:1 compatible with the docker CLI. I _think_ VSCode had an option to specify the docker command, in which case you can simply `podman` into it. Alternatively, if that doesn't then you can always put this script in your path as `docker`: #!/bin/sh exec podman "$@" Edit: if you're on Windows then the simplest approach would be to copy podman.exe to docker.exe.
- vially 3y ago
  I've been using VSCode with devcontainers and podman for a couple of months now and everything seems to work fine for me. Is there a particular issue you're hitting?
  - TrickardRixx 3y ago
    Honestly, it's been a long time; I should probably just try again. The last attempt I made was on windows before WSL2 existed. At the time I assumed the issue was with podman on HyperV/WSL.
- neurostimulant 3y ago
  If everything else fails, you can always run code-server inside a podman container.
dissident_coder 3y ago
Does it support working with a custom default system connection yet? I use podman in parallels because I get way better performance than with the qemu podman machine but podman desktop hasn’t worked with it so I stick to the cli which works seamlessly.
alberth 3y ago
How does OrbStack compare; anyone tried it yet? The website makes some big claims. https://orbstack.dev/ https://orbstack.dev/ EDIT: why the downvotes?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
I_am_tiberius 3y ago
I just read Podman, went on the website, saw the brew install command, opened the app and noticed it's not a podcast client.
jpeeler 3y ago
I did not realize a Flatpak exists (apparently for several years): https://flathub.org/apps/io.podman_desktop.PodmanDesktop https://flathub.org/apps/io.podman_desktop.PodmanDesktop It's an electron app, so if you're on Wayland executing like this will make it look decent: flatpak run io.podman_desktop.PodmanDesktop --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland (after also enabling the wayland socket permission).
- emptysongglass 3y ago
  Is there a method to set these flags for all Electron apps on Linux?
  - jpeeler 3y ago
    No, it looks like you have to do it on an application basis. https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/2913 https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/2913

Podman is still considered experimental with KinD clusters. I wish more efforts were spent getting better integration with KinD clusters as they're much easier to spinup and work with.

stevanLM 3y ago
What do you find easier to work with compared to minikube? As for the easiness to spinup, minikube also introduced a way to spinup a cluster in a container - so it's as smooth and simple than Kind. https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/drivers/podman/ https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/drivers/podman/ and https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/drivers/docker/ https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/drivers/docker/

candiddevmike 3y ago

I can't find what the underlying OS is on the website, how do you know what version it is/how is the underlying OS updated?

FPGAhacker 3y ago
It’s an application that can run on Mac, Linux, or Windows.
- TheFuzzball 3y ago
  They're probably talking about the Linux VM that hosts the containers.
  - mruszczyk 3y ago
    By default it's using Fedora CoreOS.
heffer 3y ago
"By default, the VM distribution is Fedora CoreOS except for WSL which is based on a custom Fedora image. While Fedora CoreOS upgrades come out every 14 days, the automatic update mechanism Zincata is disabled by Podman machine." Source: https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-machine-init.1.html https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-machine-ini...

cpressland 3y ago

I might look at switching our users over to Podman, considerably less bloat than Docker Desktop. Installing Docker Desktop is a PITA via MDM as it requires the user to have admin rights on first launch (unless they follow additional steps)

enragedcacti 3y ago

Does anyone have resources or advice for someone interested in podman as a replacement for docker-compose? There is a lot I like about podman but my previous exposure to kubernetes felt extremely complicated for my use cases. Most of the time my docker-compose projects only need to run on one or two machines without much horizontal scaling or fault tolerance and portability/ease of spin-up are more important than high 9s edge cases. If that's my use case should I just stick with docker-compose, or does podman simplify kubernetes config enough that its worth considering the switch? I'd like the flexibility of being able to deploy to a k8s cluster if the cost is cheap in terms of mental overhead and how easy it is for another developer to pick up and run with.

unethical_ban 3y ago
https://developers.redhat.com/e-books/podman-action https://developers.redhat.com/e-books/podman-action
worldsayshi 3y ago
I'm not sure how podman fits into this thought but I feel what's needed to make kubernetes as easy to use as docker-compose is a bunch of sane defaults for things that you mostly don't want to care about for smaller projects. And then maybe an option to easily "eject" the configuration when the project grows. There has to be some attempt at this right?
- vbezhenar 3y ago
  Can you clarify what's hard about using kubernetes for smaller projects and what do you want to omit?
  - jasonjayr 3y ago
    helm + go-templating in YAML is pure madness. I've found k8s more manageable with straight manifests, or tooling to generate the manifests from some other source. I do need to give jsonnet a hard look, as I hear it's less crazy than yaml+templates

goalieca 3y ago

I'm a very happy podman user. It works really well to run amd64 containers on aarm64 thanks to qemu and it also has great modern features like rootless.

mati365 3y ago
I made even podman quadlet ansible template for that (excluding x86 emulation part). It is dead simple and easy to fix. https://github.com/Mati365/hetzner-podman-bunjs-deploy https://github.com/Mati365/hetzner-podman-bunjs-deploy

jasonjayr 3y ago

IIRC, on windows, podman(+ docker) desktop create a Linux HyperV VM, and run the containers on that. As a Linux native dropped into Windows, I've already been able to bring up docker, podman, k8s, and anything else in linux with more control over the linux VM I've created. What does the 'Desktop' version of docker or podman bring to windows, that I don't already have by shelling into my on-device VM and using docker/podman tools directly?

pjmlp 3y ago
We love graphical tools, and usually leave the CLI for scripting automation. Also, Windows containers do matter in some environments, and they are exposed via the Docker APIs.
never_inline 3y ago
They exist for the same reason several git GUIs and Kubernetes dashboards exist.
drdaeman 3y ago
Podman on Windows creates a WSL2 distribution (`podman-machine-default` or whatever name one had picked shows up in `wsl --list` right next to other "normal" GNU/Linux distros), it doesn't create any VMs in Hyper-V sense (that show up in Get-VM or HyperV GUI tools). So, essentially, it's an automation that sets up stuff in WSL for you, plus creates some interoperability from the Windows side such as Docker API named pipe or podman CLI. Nothing you can't do yourself, if you want to do it yourself. Plus it bundles with those extensions like pre-setup dev Kubernetes or whatever, if you care about those.

pxc 3y ago

Just recently set up Podman Desktop on Mac for work (on my old computer, I'd used Rancher Desktop on Windows). Getting everything installed was a little bit annoying, since I use a nonstandard Homebrew prefix, and Homebrew doesn't currently provide a 'cask' for the pre-built Podman binaries. That means that `brew install --cask podman-desktop` requires building a bunch of things from source for me. But writing one wasn't hard, and the install process was good after that. One issue I seem to have consistently though is that the VM `podman machine` uses hangs. I haven't investigated it, but I think it might hang every time my laptop sleeps, because it's most often hung when I come back to my computer in the mornings, and that seems so damn near every time. Anyone else have this problem on macOS?

Blehmo 3y ago
I was hoping not to read your comment because thats the reason why i stoped playing around with podman. The frustration of the background VM having some issues on my mac made me switch to paid docker again. I don't have the time to play around with something which i need for work and costs 10$ per month. And i do prefer opensource
- pxc 3y ago
  It looks like this might be the issue: https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/334 https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/334 I wouldn't think that qemu would be associated with a display in the required way here, but maybe being launched by a GUI app that's not a terminal emulator is somehow enough? Related bug affecting Lima (blocked by this one): https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/issues/2 https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/issues/2 This is the first I'd heard of 'app nap'. I guess macOS does iOS things and actively freezes apps it thinks are idle. Maybe it has to do this to get passable battery life during sleep, now that Macs don't actually sleep (S3) anymore?
- hocuspocus 3y ago
  My employer stopped paying for Docker Desktop licenses but I never really understood the appeal in the first place, we definitely faced some issues with our enterprise setup (proxy and registry mirrors, nothing out of the ordinary for a big company). Colima works pretty well, and documenting a reproducible setup is easy. If I were willing to spend my own money, I'd pick OrbStack.

TrickardRixx 3y ago

I like to develop with VS Code and devcontainers. I've never been able to get that setup to work with podman as the backend. Has anyone successfully done this or perhaps know of a blog detailing how to accomplish this that I haven't been able to find?

tedheath123 3y ago
Yes, I have docker as an alias to root podman and VS Code is able to build a devcontainer with it. Rootless also works but was a lot slower for me. There are a couple of minor incompatibilities I've noticed in other areas: * Podman doesn't have a unix socket like /var/run/docker.sock but it can be set up with podman-system-service if needed. * Some applications check if /.dockerenv exists. They shouldn't, but you can just touch a file there to work around it.
zamalek 3y ago
I think I did at one point. Podman is 1:1 compatible with the docker CLI. I _think_ VSCode had an option to specify the docker command, in which case you can simply `podman` into it. Alternatively, if that doesn't then you can always put this script in your path as `docker`: #!/bin/sh exec podman "$@" Edit: if you're on Windows then the simplest approach would be to copy podman.exe to docker.exe.
vially 3y ago
I've been using VSCode with devcontainers and podman for a couple of months now and everything seems to work fine for me. Is there a particular issue you're hitting?
- TrickardRixx 3y ago
  Honestly, it's been a long time; I should probably just try again. The last attempt I made was on windows before WSL2 existed. At the time I assumed the issue was with podman on HyperV/WSL.
neurostimulant 3y ago
If everything else fails, you can always run code-server inside a podman container.

dissident_coder 3y ago

Does it support working with a custom default system connection yet? I use podman in parallels because I get way better performance than with the qemu podman machine but podman desktop hasn’t worked with it so I stick to the cli which works seamlessly.

alberth 3y ago

How does OrbStack compare; anyone tried it yet? The website makes some big claims. https://orbstack.dev/ https://orbstack.dev/ EDIT: why the downvotes?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

I_am_tiberius 3y ago

I just read Podman, went on the website, saw the brew install command, opened the app and noticed it's not a podcast client.

jpeeler 3y ago

I did not realize a Flatpak exists (apparently for several years): https://flathub.org/apps/io.podman_desktop.PodmanDesktop https://flathub.org/apps/io.podman_desktop.PodmanDesktop It's an electron app, so if you're on Wayland executing like this will make it look decent: flatpak run io.podman_desktop.PodmanDesktop --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland (after also enabling the wayland socket permission).

emptysongglass 3y ago
Is there a method to set these flags for all Electron apps on Linux?
- jpeeler 3y ago
  No, it looks like you have to do it on an application basis. https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/2913 https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/2913