Going over the real limitations of Podman: networking and ports in rootless mode, incomplete Docker Compose compatibility, a VM standing in for the promised daemonless setup on macOS/Windows, no multi-host orchestration, a less mature ecosystem, and a steeper learning curve for newcomers.
Podman is a daemonless container engine focused on security and rootless operation. A look at the project’s history, architecture, differences from Docker, pods, Quadlet, and Podlet - and when it’s worth switching.
Quadlet is Podman’s declarative systemd unit format, and Podlet is a utility that generates those units from podman run and docker-compose.yml. A hands-on look at both tools, compared against Docker Compose.