[awoimbee]

The main issue is podman support on Ubuntu. Ubuntu ships outdated podman versions that don't work out of the box. So I use podman v5, GitHub actions uses podman v3, and my coworkers on Ubuntu use docker. So now my script must work with old podman, recent podman and docker

[rsyring]

Additionally, there aren't even any trusted repos out there building/publishing a .deb for it. The ones that I could find when I searched last were all outdated or indicated they were not going to keep moving forward.

I could get over this. But, IMO, it lends itself to asking the "why" question. Why wouldn't Podman make installing it easier? And the only thing that makes sense to me is that RedHat doesn't want their dev effort supporting their competitor's products.

That's a perfectly reasonable stance, they owe me nothing. But, it does make me feel that anything not in the RH ecosystem is going to be treated as a second-class citizen. That concerns me more than having to build my own debs.

[gucci-on-fleek]

They publish statically-linked binaries on GitHub [0], so to install it, you just need to download and unpack a single file. But you don't get any automatic updates like you would if they provided an apt repository.

[0]: https://github.com/containers/podman/releases

[throwaway127482]

Aren't the statically linked binaries just the remote client? i.e. they can't run containers on their own, right?

In the past I think I wound up using https://github.com/mgoltzsche/podman-static because I could not get those podman static binaries to work

[rsyring]

Wow! I can't believe I missed that. Thanks.

[rsyring]

Apparently, I didn't miss anything after all. :(

See sibling comment above about them being just remote binaries.

[Eduard]

how come there is no podman Linux installer?

[gucci-on-fleek]

Well all the downstream distros have their own installers (apt, dnf, pacman, etc.). If you're compiling from source, then "make install" [0] should work as expected, and if you're downloading the pre-built binaries from GitHub [1], you just need to copy a single statically-linked binary into "/usr/local/bin".

[0]: https://github.com/containers/podman/blob/c8183c50/Makefile#...

[1]: https://github.com/containers/podman/releases

[xylophile]

You mean curl?

[dathinab]

> Why wouldn't Podman make installing it easier?

What else can they do then having a package for every distro?

https://podman.io/docs/installation#installing-on-linux

Including instructions to build from source (including for Debian and Ubuntu):

https://podman.io/docs/installation#building-from-source

I don't know about this specific case but Debian and or Ubuntu having outdated software is a common Debian/Ubuntu problem which nearly always is cause by Debian/Ubuntu itself (funnily if it's outdated in Ubuntu doesn't mean it's outdated in Debian and the other way around ;=) ).

[rsyring]

> What else can they do...

They can do what Docker and many other software providers do that are committed to cross OS functionality. They could build packages for those OSes. Example:

https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/#install-using...

The install instructions you link to are relying on the OS providers to build/package Podman as part of their OS release process. But that is notoriously out-of-date.

You could argue, "Not Podman's Problem", and, in one sense, you'd be right. But, again, it leads to the question "Why wouldn't they make it their problem like so many other popular projects have?" and I believe I answered that previously.

[dathinab]

> build/package Podman as part of their OS release process. But that is notoriously out-of-date.

providing duplicate/additional non official builds for other OS is

- undermining the OSes package curation

- confusing for the user

- cost additional developer time, which for most OSS is fairly limited

- for non vendorable system dependencies this additional dev time cost can be way higher in all kinds of surprising ways

- obfuscate if a Linux distro is in-cable of properly maintaining their packages

- lead to a splitting of the target OS specific eco system of software using this as a dependency

etc.

it's a lose lose lose for pretty much everyone involved

so as long as you don't have a have a monetary reason that you must do it (like e.g. docker has) it's in my personal opinion a very dump thing to do

I apologize for being a bit blunt but in the end why not use a Linux distribution which works with modern software development cycles?

Blaming others for problems with the OS you decided to use when there are alternatives seems not very productive.

[rsyring]

> cost additional developer time, which for most OSS is fairly limited

Mostly agree. But something like Podman w/ RedHat behind it is unlikely to be limited in the same way a lot of community OSS projects are.

Unfortunately, I disagree with just about every other point you made but don't think it's worth responding point-by-point. In short, I think a project having dedicated builds for popular OSes is a win-win for just about everyone, excepting that it does take, sometimes a considerable amount of, effort to support those cross OS builds. Additionally, there are now options like Snap/Flatpack/AppImage that can be targets instead of the OS itself, although there is admittedly a tradeoff there as well.

For some projects, say something like ripgrep, just using what is in the OS repo is fine because having the latest and greatest features/bug-fixes is unlikely to matter to most people using the tool.

But, on something like Podman, where there is so many pieces, it's a relatively new technology, and the interaction between Kernel, OS, and user space is so high, being stuck with a non-current OS provided release for a couple years is a non-starter.

> why not use a Linux distribution which works with modern software development cycles?

Because I like my OS to be stable, widely supported, and I also like some of my applications to be evergreen. I find Ubuntu is usually a really good mix that way and I'm going on 15+ years of use. There are other solutions for that that I could use, but I'm mostly happy where I am and don't want to spend the kind of time it would take to adopt a different OS and everything that would follow from that.

That leads _me_ to avoid Podman currently. I can appreciate that you have a different opinion, I just think you are a overplaying your perspective a bit in the comment above.

[dathinab]

> like Snap/Flatpack/AppImage that can be targets instead of the OS itself [..] ripgrep

sure I agree that where it's easily doable (like e.g. ripgrep) having non distro specific builds is a must have

But sadly this doesn't fully work for podman AFIK as it involves a lot of subtle interactions with things which aren't consistently setup across Linux distros with probably the worst offender being the Linux security modules system (e.g. SELinux, AppArmor etc.). But thinking about probably sooner or later you probably could have a mostly OS independent postman setup (limited to newer OS versions). Or to be more specific 3 one with SELinux one with AppArmor and neither with neither, so I guess maybe not :/

[ibejoeb]

>something like Podman w/ RedHat behind it is unlikely to be limited in the same way a lot of community OSS projects are

exactly. I've built podman for debian. It's not an esoteric target. It gets a little hairy with all of the capabilities stuff and selinux, but it's feasible. Give me, I don't know, $10k a quarter and I'd probably do it.

[xylophile]

Trying to be genuinely helpful here:

After many years of "I want stability and evergreen", I finally realized that this is Fedora. Each release is very stable, and they arrive more often than once an eon.

[c-hendricks]

Is there something wrong with the version in homebrew?

https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/podman

[kiney]

debian trixie has podman 5 packages in official repos. Good chance thqt those work on ubuntu

[gm678]

Also on Ubuntu 25.04, which I updated a homeserver too despite it not being LTS just for the easy access to Podman 5. Once Ubuntu 26.04 comes out the pain described by some sibling comments should end. Podman 4 is a workable version but 5.0 is where I'd say it really became a complete replacement for Docker and quadlets fully matured.

[bityard]

Not a good idea: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian

(It's titled "Don't Break Debian" but might also be called "Don't Break Ubuntu" as it applies there just as well.)

[alyandon]

Yeah, the lack of an official upstream .deb that is kept up to date (like the official Docker .deb repos) for Ubuntu really kills using podman for most of my internal use cases.

[troyvit]

This is my biggest problem too, and it's not just my problem but Podman's problem. Lack of name recognition is big for sure compared to Docker, but to me this version mismatch problem is higher on the list and more sure to keep Podman niche. Distros like Ubuntu always ship with older versions of software, it's sadly up to the maintainer to release newer versions, and Podman just doesn't seem interested in doing that. I don't know if it was their goal but it got me to use some RedHat derivative on my home server just to get a later version.

[ramon156]

One of the reasons I don't use Ubuntu/debian is because it's just too damn slow with updates. I'm noticing that to this day it's still an issue.

Yes I could use flatpack on ubuntu, however I feel like this is partly something Ubuntu/Debian should provide out-of-the-box

[alyandon]

LTS in general being slow to uptake new versions of software is a feature not a bug. It gives predictability at the cost of having to deal with older versions of software.

With Ubuntu at least, some upstreams publish official PPAs so that you aren't stuck on the rapidly aging versions that Canonical picks when they cut an LTS release.

Debian I found out recently has something similar now via "extrepo".

[skydhash]

I use debian specifically for things to be kept the same. Once I got things setup, I don’t really want random updates to come and break things.

[rsyring]

Ubuntu is committed to the Snap ecosystem and there is a lot of software that you can get from a snap if you need it to be evergreen.

[bityard]

Since Podman is open source, Ubuntu (and others) are able to package it and and update it themselves if they choose. But I think it's understandable that Red Hat would not want to pay their development teams to package their software for a direct competitor.

[oakhaven]

Yes! I really like the idea of podman, but after 4 hours trying to make it work on 24.04, I reverted to Docker and compose.

There is some dissonance in presenting Podman as a plug-in replacement for Docker, and making it so damn hard to install on (some category's) most popular contemporary LTS Linux distro.

[physicles]

I had this problem on the latest Pop OS LTS (I know, I know). Took about 4 hours to find the magic incantation that would let me install podman >= 4 without breaking anything else.

[chanux]

You just effortlessly summarized one of the major headaches in tech in real world!

[ac130kz]

That's an Ubuntu issue though, they ship lots of outdated software. Nginx, PHP, PostgreSQL, Podman, etc, the critical software that must be updated asap, even with stable versions they all require a PPA to be properly updated.