Podman

Podman
Developer(s)	Red Hat
Stable release	5.6.1 [1] / 4 September 2025;6 days ago (4 September 2025)
Repository	github.com/containers/podman
Written in	Go
Operating system	Linux, Windows, macOS, FreeBSD
Type	OS-level virtualization
License	Apache-2.0 license
Website	podman.io

In computing, Podman (pod manager) is an open source Open Container Initiative (OCI)-compliant ^[2] container management tool from Red Hat used for handling containers, images, volumes, and pods on the Linux operating system, ^[3] with support for macOS and Microsoft Windows via a virtual machine. ^[4] Based on the libpod library, it offers APIs for the lifecycle management of containers, pods, images, and volumes. The API is identical to the Docker API. ^[5] Podman Desktop provides an alternative to Docker Desktop. ^[6]

History

The first public release of Podman (v0.2) was released in 2018, version 1.0.0 of Podman was released on January 16th, 2019. ^[7]

Version 1.0 of Podman Desktop was released on May 23, 2023. ^{[8] [9]}

In KubeCon 2024, Red Hat announced that it will contribute Podman and Podman Desktop to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNFC), by that point, Podman Desktop had already been downloaded 1.5 million times, ^[10] the projects were accepted into the CNCF in January 21st of 2025. ^{[11] [12]}

Adoption

In the 2025 Stack Overflow survey, among 20,070 survey respondents identifying as professionals, 10.9% said that they had used Podman in the past year, compared to 73.8% and 30.1% for Docker and Kubernetes respectively. ^[13]

Design

Podman is a "daemonless" tool, ^[14] as opposed to other containerization systems like Docker, which uses a background service called dockerd to manage its containers, Podman relies on systemd for managing its container life cycles. ^[15]

Security

Podman lets containers run without root privileges (rootless), meaning they can be created, run, and managed by regular users without administrator rights by using Linux namespaces. ^[16]

See also

• Free and open-source software portal

• List of Linux containers

References

1. "v5.6.1". 4 September 2025. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
2. Walker, James (June 4, 2021). "What Is Podman and How Does It Differ from Docker?". How-To Geek.
3. Primavera, Jacqueline (June 17, 2022). "What is Podman? The container engine replacing Docker". InfoWorld .
4. Krill, Paul (May 23, 2023). "Red Hat puts Podman container management on the desktop". InfoWorld .
5. "Podman | GoLand". GoLand Help.
6. Walker, James (January 19, 2023). "Getting Started With Podman Desktop, an Open Source Docker Desktop Alternative". How-To Geek.
7. "Podman v1.0.0 Released | Podman". podman.io. 16 January 2019. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
8. "Podman Desktop 1.0: The next-gen container management solution streamlining developers container operations". Red Hat Blog. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
9. Anderson, Tim (24 May 2023). "Podman Desktop 1.0 released: a challenge to Docker Desktop • DEVCLASS". DEVCLASS. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
10. "Red Hat to Contribute Comprehensive Container Tools Collection to Cloud Native Computing Foundation". Red Hat Blog. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
11. "Podman Desktop". CNCF. 10 September 2025. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
12. "Podman Container Tools". CNCF. 10 September 2025. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
13. "Technology | 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey". Stack Overfllow. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
14. "What is Podman? — Podman documentation". docs.podman.io. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
15. "Containers in 2025: Docker vs. Podman for Modern Developers". Linux Journal . Retrieved 10 September 2025.
16. "Rootless containers with Podman". Red Hat Developer. 25 September 2020. Retrieved 2024-10-12.

Further reading

• "Podman in Action: Secure, Rootless Containers for Kubernetes, Microservices, and More: Walsh, Daniel: 9781633439689: Books". learning.oreilly.com.
• "Podman for DevOps: Containerization reimagined with Podman and its companion tools: Arrichiello, Alessandro, Salinetti, Gianni: 9781803248233: Books". packtpub.com.