Introduction to Podman

Podman (the Pod Manager) is a daemonless, open-source, Linux-native tool designed to make it easy to find, run, build, share, and deploy applications using Open Container Initiative (OCI) Containers and Container Images.

Why Use Podman instead of Docker?

• Daemonless Architecture: Docker relies on a background daemon (dockerd). Podman runs containers directly under the user process, improving stability and resource usage.
• Rootless by Default: Podman containers do not require root privileges to run, significantly improving the security posture of your selfhosted services.
• Pods Concept: Like Kubernetes, Podman allows you to group containers together in “pods” that share the same network namespace and resources.
• Docker Compatible: Podman matches the Docker CLI commands. You can even set up an alias: alias docker=podman.

Installing Podman on Ubuntu

To install Podman on Ubuntu, run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y podman

To run a simple container without root privileges:

podman run -d --name webserver -p 8080:80 nginx

Check out our Containerization Platform Guides to learn more.