I ditched Docker for Podman

I've wanted to migrate multiple times. Unfortunately, it failed on multiple places.

Firstly, podman had a much worse performance compared to docker on my small cloud vps. Can't really go into details though.

Secondly, the development ecosystem isn't really fully there yet. Many tools utilizing Docker via its socket, fail to work reliably with podman. Either because the API differs or because of permission limitations. Sure, the tools could probably work around those limitations, but they haven't and podman isn't a direct 1:1 drop in replacement.

> podman had a much worse performance compared to docker on my small cloud vps. Can't really go into details though.

Are you using rootless podman? Then network redirection is done using user more networking, which has two modes: slirp4netns is very slow, pasta is the newer and good one.

Docker is always set up from the privileged daemon; if you're running podman from the root user there should be no difference.

Well, yes, but rootless is basically the main selling point of podman. Once you start using daemons and privileged containers, you can just keep using docker.

No, the main selling point is daemonless. For example, you put podman in a systemd unit and you can stop/start with systemctl without an external point of failure.

Comparing root docker with rootless podman performance is apples to oranges. However, even for rootless pasta does have good performance.

Some tools talk to docker not using the docker CLI but directly through its REST API. Podman also exposes a similar REST API[1]. Is Podman with its API server switched on substantially different from the docker daemon?

[1]. https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-system-serv...