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Comment by bmurphy1976 | Hacker News Reader

bmurphy1976

I tried to use podman desktop for a bit but I ran into some screwy compatibility issues. It just wasn't as smooth as docker.

I really really want an alternative to docker desktop. I don't like the path they're going down. I don't like the AI crap in the UI. The licensing is crazy. It just doesn't feel right.

So I've been lately using rancher by SuSE. Surprisingly, it's been all right. So far it just works. I'm using this on Mac OS.

If anybody's looking for an alternative that's one worth considering.

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I'm still confused by why anyone wants to use either Docker or Podman desktops. The the docker/Podman CLIs seem like a much better way to interact with containers/images. Maybe it's just my usecase.

I can't speak to docker, but the Podman desktop UI on MacOS doesn't really offer any functionality that the CLI doesn't. It's more like a status dashboard than anything else. I personally never look at it. I don't see how you can get very far managing containers, images, etc using _just_ the UI in any case.

Agreed. To be honest I feel the same way about k8s. A bunch of people on my team get grumpy if we don't have k9s available or some other interface, but I prefer to just use kubectl

I personally use Docker Desktop because it was the easiest way to install Docker on my Mac. I launch Docker Desktop, close the window but keep the app running in the background, then use the docker tool on the command line :)

The API is pretty extensive too. It works on a local socket that you can start on demand. (Lest people think there's a daemon or root requirement)

OrbStack is a very compelling alternative on macOS. The GUI launches instantly due to being a Swift app and not Electron. Container filesystems are visible in Finder. You can spin up full-blown VMs with it (only Linux ones though). Storage is managed dynamically, so you don't have to reserve or resize the virtual disk. Free for personal use, with zero nags or upsells.

Orb is definitely the winner. It’s fast. It does the job well. Never had an issue with it in two years.

How are you deploying? I’m on dokploy so I’m not sure of compatibility

I use good old `docker compose`. It's 100% compatible, since it uses the same moby engine underneath. I've also run k3d on it, so I'm pretty sure it'll handle anything you throw at it.

I can attest, Orbstack has been a gamechanger. Happily paying for the pro license.

Does anyone know if the company is still active. Haven't seen any updates for a while now. I like the product a lot, but products like this need security updates at the very least.

Last release was November 2025 which isn't that terribly long ago. https://docs.orbstack.dev/release-notes. They do look to have stopped blogging on orbstack.dev for more than a year now. They have a discord channel, but I'm not up for dealing with discord to check on it.

What sort of compatibility issues were you encountering? (disclaimer: I'm on the Podman Desktop team)

If it was compose + docker compatibility issues, that's on the roadmap for improvement :). Compose support is flakey at times (it's essentially a wrapper around the open source binary https://github.com/docker/compose)

The most common one I run into is with volumes, when the full path doesn't already exist. Docker will just make the path, Podman throws an error. It's been called a "bug" in docker but the fact is everyone just expects the paths to be created. I want it to just work, not make everyone in the industry redo their dockerfiles to be "correct."

https://github.com/containers/podman/issues/6234

It looks like there was some work done to resolve this in 2023 and 2024 but I know this was still happening for me in mid 2025. Podman is technically correct here but functionally broken in a way that keeps pushing me away because I don't have time to deal with that :(

Running a docker container having side effects on the host seems bad. You've just convinced me a little bit I want podman, and not docker.

Not me, docker is the standard, works great for me, if it didn't, I'd look at alternatives.

Podman also works great but one has to stop trying to use it as if it were docker.

I’ve encountered this one:

https://github.com/containers/buildah/issues/6460

Also, there’s Podman’s decision to drop CNI support. Sure, I get that they want to support the full stack, but netavark is really not especially capable, and CNI allows all kinds of interesting (and frequently overcomplicated) things.

> https://github.com/containers/buildah/issues/6460

This was just fixed today :)

I had issues with performance/power management, and had to abandon Podman Desktop on Windows. Have not checked out recently, but my issues may possibly be solved by

https://github.com/podman-desktop/podman-desktop/issues/1035...

Basically I had a 5 second periodic CPU spike after some update. Also I had some compose issues, and some issue with Fedora based WSL. These together were blockers for me at that point, but I'm using podman on my pet Fedora server, and it works (using quadlets there) perfectly there, and will retry it on Windows also when I get the time.

If you're open to questions, I'm switching my teams from Docker to Podman on macOS. I'm hitting blockers for multi-user setups i.e. each developer has a non-admin account on the machine, whereas brew runs in its own account with admin permissions.

I would love a way to have Podman installable in userspace meaning in a non-admin account, or installable without brew, or with a dependency list such as QEMU or whatever else needs to be installed by an admin ahead of time, or with a sudousers config list, etc.

I know this is an atypical setup. Any advice from anyone here is much appreciated about multi-user non-admin macOS container setup for Podman or Docker or equivalent.

No watch support in compose: https://github.com/containers/podman-compose/issues/792

It's been a couple months so I don't remember the details. I am however a heavy compose user to this so promising. I don't any ill will towards the project, just waiting for it to fit my needs.

I put off podman for a while because of claims of compatibility issues, which is unfortunate because I've had an excellent experience since switching over. Can you point as specific issues you've had (not doubting, just curious)?

I also have heard a lot of recommendations for OrbStack, but I haven't had problems with speed either. And I could never stomach using a proprietary system for such a core part of my workflow.

For context I use containers for practically everything and I run some decently complex workflows on them: fullstack node codebases, networking, persistent volumes, mounting, watch mode, etc. Red Hat knocked it out of the park with podman!

I've had a ton of issues trying to use Podman instead of Docker on Fedora. SELinux keeps blocking Podman from doing stuff it needs to, while Docker just works.

I've also experienced Podman "getting stuck" sometimes: it's just running a build, but ctrl+c somehow doesn't stop the build system and instead freezes Podman. Doesn't really happen with Docker.

I love rancher too and I have less issues of docker using all of my local disk. Learned about it at a local Python meetup.

Sorrt for may be a complete ignorant question but whats the use case of docker desktop as opposed docker cli

Docker Engine (the "CLI") only works on Linux. "Desktop" is supposed to offer a unified experience across platforms, it offers a GUI, ships Docker Engine inside a virtual machine so that it works on Windows and MacOS, and tries to make the VM as transparent/invisible as possible (with varying success) with filesystem mounts and network configuration.

It also includes a local k8s cluster. So you get 2 in 1 package.

Why would you want that?

Because several developers that work with docker also deploy to Kubernetes. So docker-desktop is a one-click method to get both on your workstation and deploy locally.

Another alternative (although Mac OS-only) is [0] OrbStack. Some devs in my team are running it as a more performant alternative to Docker Desktop for Mac and they are very happy so far.

[0]: https://orbstack.dev

I got into problems with test containers on podman and I have no idea how to solve them. Have you fought with that by any chance?

I'll just add another vote for OrbStack. I found it way faster on M1 and M5 and never found any compatibility issues.

I also like that Rancher Desktop supports nerdctl. Colima is another similar project.

I imagine that OrbStack has containerd buried inside somewhere and could support ctr and (awkwardly) nerdctl, but if so it’s pretty well hidden.

I build containers for multiple platforms using orbstack, and that requires the containerd backend. So yes, it's in there somewhere.

Huh. Are you actually talking to containerd directly or are you just doing something via the docker frontend that requires containerd to function?

Presumably it's talking to the docker daemon which itself farms some piece out to containerd? I'm really not sure how the integration works.

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