[ChocolateGod]

You can achieve similar results with podman and bubblewrap, but podman handles things like networking, resource and image management that bubblewrap doesn't by itself

Bubblewrap really is more for sandboxing "transient" containers and being able to separate specific things from the host (such as libraries), with other applications handling the image management, which makes sense because its primary user is Flatpak and Steam. Once the application inside the container is exited, the sandbox is destroyed, it's job is done.

Podman is a Docker clone, it's for development or persistent containers. It will monitor containers, restart them, can pull image updates, setup networks between them etc.

They both use namespacing and cgroups under the hood, but for different results and purposes.

Your right that systemd has sandboxing too, and it also uses the same features as the kernel. Podman can also export it's services to be managed by systemd.

There's literally so much choice when it comes to making containers on Linux.

[godelski]

  > but podman handles things like networking, resource and image management

Btw, you can do all of this with systemd too

  > the sandbox is destroyed, it's job is done.

I think most container systems have an ephemeral option. If you're looking at systemd then look at the man pages for either systemd-nspawn or systemd-vmspawn and look under Image Options. More specifically `-x, --ephemeral`. It's a pretty handy option.

  > Podman can also export it's services to be managed by systemd.

But in that case, why not just use systemd? ;)

  > There's literally so much choice when it comes to making containers on Linux.

Despite my joke above, I actually love this. Having options is great and I think it ends up pushing all of them to be better. The competition is great. I'm hyping systemd up a bit but honestly there's gives and takes with each of the different methods. There's healthy competition right now, but I do think systemd deserves a bit more love than it currently gets.

[ChocolateGod]

> But in that case, why not just use systemd? ;)

Because some stuff is shipped and supported as a docker image and it's just easier to run it via podman which supports nearly all the same options.

[godelski]

Yeah, that is a big drawback. But as mentioned elsewhere and by others, there is `importctl`. So you can ship these images as well. Meaning only one person needs to make that image for others to be able to get the same convenience as pulling a docker image.

I'm unsure if someone has made a tool to convert docker images to systemd. If not, that'd be a pretty handy one.

[Imustaskforhelp]

podman + systemd integration seems really nice now.

given that podman can also have a (nicer?) transition to docker is a plus as well.

There are a lot of paas nowadays which use docker under the hood. I think I would love seeing a future where a paas actually manages it using systemd.

I think this might be really nice giving an almost standard way of installing software.

I really want to try to create something like dokku or some gui for making systemd management easier but I will see some alternatives currently, thanks for sharing it!