I ditched Docker for Podman

I don't know how podman compares to docker in terms of performance, and I do know that rootless containers can be a real pain.

But Docker is simply a non-starter. It's based on a highly privileged daemon with an enormous, hyper-complicated attack surface. It's a fundamentally bad architecture, and as far as I've been able to tell, it also comes from a project that's always shown an "Aw, shucks" attitude toward security. Nobody should be installing that anywhere, not even if there weren't an alternative.

Rootless containers are a pain but only on mac, otherwise it’s just pure upside.

I generally find rootless pretty easy, it's just annoying that it's an additional few steps. Feels like an afterthought when it should be the default.

It's easy in theory. I'd say about 30% of my containers require root and just wouldn't work on Podman.

I could not agree more with this, and I am baffled by most of the tech scene's complete ignorance of security in this regard

You can run containers as root under Podman. You just don't have to.