Docker alternative that is both secure and open source
Rating: 10 out of 10
IncentivizedUse Cases and Deployment Scope
As our primary servers are on CentOS and Fedora, a lot of our workload goes through podman which it comes with as default. We run all the containers in podman for not really the licensing reasons of docker, but more it being daemonless and not requiring root user.
Pros
- It’s daemonless, so somewhat more secure.
- It works exceptionally well and is compatible with Docker compose
- Podman Desktop actually makes individual usage also pretty easy.
- It can be used as Docker alternative with almost no additional steps
Cons
- Podman desktop is getting more stable with each version, but does need more UX friendliness as well.
- Official support for development tools and IDEs is missing for most tools
- It works well with Kubernetes, but I wouldn’t mind additional improvements
Likelihood to Recommend
While it always depends on your use case, I believe security concerns of need for root user is a concern, so it is worth considering daemonless container service over Docker, which works just as good and has support for docker compose. Another good reason is the licensing for enterprise usage, which podman has no restrictions for. It’s also a great choice for OpenShift integration, which is seamless and works well with Rancher as well.
Vetted Review
3 years of experience