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Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

Why or how is this different from running podman in Ubuntu/fedora/Linux?

It is a GUI for working with podman, docker, and kubernetes. It is functionally similar to Docker Desktop, which is also just a GUI to work with containers. It is a tool for those that prefer working with containers with a GUI instead of the terminal.

> It is a tool for those that prefer working with containers with a GUI instead of the terminal.

Sort of. In the case of podman desktop, that is true because you can opt to just install the cli podman if you prefer.

But in the world of Docker, they force end-users on Mac (and I think windows) to install docker through docker desktop even if you don't ever touch the GUI. I don't use the GUI ever, but can't find a way to install docker on Mac outside of the GUI. Maybe there's a way, but at least on Docker's website it seems to be the only way and at my company with ~100 devs no one else has figured it out either.

On windows I just use WSL2 with docker installed through the Linux distribution (Ubuntu in my case). This way I get docker on my windows Laptop without the annoying docker desktop

Did you follow a particular guide for how to do that?

I remember trying a while back, when WSL2 was first released, and I couldn't get it to work; IIRC I couldn't get stuff running in Windows to communicate with stuff running in containers in WSL2, and also vice-versa.

On WSL2, you just install Docker the same way as you would do on Linux. `sudo apt install docker.io` (from Debian/Ubuntu repo) or `curl https://get.docker.com | sh` (from Docker Inc). If you are using different WSL distribution, the standard way to install docker should work just fine. (e.g. `sudo pacman -S docker` works as expected on ArchWSL)

I agree. I do remember that in earlier versions WSL2 this approach didn't work, but currently it's the same as installing docker on a regular Linux distribution

Nice! Are there any limitations to be aware of?

I wanted to build a Windows container image but I really did not want to install Docker Desktop. After some digging around I found my way to the Docker server / client binaries for Windows page that allowed me to do this: https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/binaries/#install-ser...

Thanks, that's good to keep in mind if I ever need to run docker engine on windows!

I think you can use docker-machine for this purpose: https://datamachines.com/blog/how-to-install-a-docker-machin...

> But in the world of Docker, they force end-users on Mac (and I think windows) to install docker through docker desktop even if you don't ever touch the GUI.

They try. But between homebrew and Colima you can get away with cli tools.

Well the most significant difference [on macOS or Windows] is you must use a VM (by default Podman Machine) so there can be a Linux kernel to run the containers.

This is a significant limitation that you do not have when running on Linux. As I recall there are some other (related?) features that are not implemented on the macOS.

[edited to reflect that I misread the parent and thought they were specifically asking what was different on non-Linux platforms)

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