Podman

Podman at a glance

Podman is a popular daemonless container engine and a drop-in Docker alternative, favoured for rootless containers and tighter security defaults. Podman ships regular releases plus security fixes; as container tooling that runs untrusted images, keeping it current matters.

For admins Podman usually comes from the distribution. Its rootless mode is a real security advantage over a root daemon, but the version story extends to the images you run: Podman only executes them, so keep the referenced images current and rebuilt, and pin digests for reproducibility. Podman is largely CLI-compatible with Docker (many alias the docker command to it), and its companion tools (Buildah, Skopeo) track alongside. After updating, verify that your containers and any systemd/Quadlet units still run. Keep the registries you pull from trusted. Track the version your distribution ships and its support window.