It’s literally OCI compatible, integrates with systemd and LSM, and runs rootless by default. Podman is 100000% better designed on the inside with the same interface on the outside.

Rootless networking is still a mess with no IP source propagation and much slower performance. So for most users docker with userNS-remapping is actually a better choice.

Also systemd integration isn't a plus for me, I don't want to deal with SystemD just to have a container start on startup.

I think --network=pasta: helps with source IP preservation.

Regardless that has never bothered me since I'm only using podman or docker for local development...

Hmmm, pasta seems to solve all rootless networking issues...

https://github.com/containers/podman/pull/16141

It’s the lack of fully compatible compose that matters most.

Podman appears to support the compose v2 spec, and the socket API, but still not fully supporting buildkit.

https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/podman-compose-docker-compos...

You're right, it's both easier and simpler since no daemons are involved. podman-compose has the same command-line interface and has worked ok for me so far (maybe 3 or 4 years at this point).

Podman-compose isn't fully compatible with the new compose spec.

Also I really don't care if docker has a daemon or not, for me it offers feature like auto starting containers without bothering with SystemD, and auto updates using watchtower and the docker socket.

And since podman doesn't have an official distro package repo like docker, you are stuck use whatever old version shipped in your distro without recent improvements, which is important for a very active development project.

> Also I really don't care if docker has a daemon or not, for me it offers feature like auto starting containers without bothering with SystemD

Bingo, the "pain" of the daemon (it's never cause a single problem for me? Especially on Linux, on macOS I've occasionally had to go start it because it wasn't running, but BFD) saves me from having to touch systemd. Or, indeed, from caring WTF distro I'm running and which init system it uses at all.

To be fair, every mainstream distro now uses Systemd

> And since podman doesn't have an official repo like docker,

Hmm... https://github.com/containers/podman

I found that on: https://podman.io/ so, I'm pretty sure it's official.

I meant a a repo for a distro package manager, so you can get the latest version regardless of whatever version your distro ships.

The most of major distros ship podman in their repositories. Just use your package manager to install podman.

And these versions are often our of date, which is important given that podman is in active a development and you want to be using the latest version.

I don't understand what the issue is. Don't use an LTS distro if you want up to date software. Fedora and Arch are up to date for Podman. Alpine seems to be one minor version behind.

I want stability for the system and a newer podman version. I do this all the time with docker, install an LTS distro and then add the official docker repos.

podman + podman-compose is as easy.

Not comparable to the full compose spec.