Podman

Podman is an open source tool for running, building and managing containers and pods without a background daemon. It works from the command line, and Podman Desktop adds a graphical app for managing containers from several engines.

Podman lets you run Linux containers on your own machine or on a server. It runs without a central service, and it can run containers as a normal user with rootless mode, which limits what a container can reach on the host. If you already use Docker workflows, you can carry them over, because Podman runs OCI-compatible images and can run docker-compose files.

• Runs without a central daemon
• Rootless containers for tighter privilege control
• Runs Docker images and docker-compose files
• Creates pods and generates Kubernetes YAML
• Podman Desktop manages containers from other engines

Developers and platform teams who want container tools without a Docker daemon, or who need rootless containers on shared machines and in environments with strict security rules.

Podman is free and released under the Apache License 2.0. It runs natively on Linux, and on macOS and Windows it runs inside a managed virtual machine that the tool sets up for you.