Hi, I’ve been thinking for a few days whether I should learn Docker or Podman. I know that Podman is more FOSS and I like it more in theory, but maybe it’s better to start with docker, for which there is a lot more tutorials. On the other hand, maybe it’s better to straight up learn podman when I don’t know any of the two and not having to change habits later. What do you think? For context, I know how containers works in theory, I know some linux I think well, but I never actually used docker nor podman. In another words: If I want to eventually end up with Podman, is it easier to start with docker and then learn Podman, or start with Podman right away? Thanks in advance
I don’t agree with the premise of your comment about containers. I think most of the downsides you listed are misplaced.
I’d argue, that actually using containers properly requires very solid Linux skills. If someone indeed blindly “compose pull & up” their stuff, this is no different than blind
curl | sudo bashwhich is still very common. People are going to muddle through the installation copy pasting stuff no matter what. I don’t see why containers and compose files would be any different than pipe to bash or random reddit comment with “step by step instructions”. Look at any forum where end users aren’t technically strong and you’ll see the same (emulation forums, raspberry pi based stuff, home automation,…) - random shell scripts,rm -rf this ; chmod 777 thatContainers are just another piece of software that someone can and will run blindly. But I don’t see why you’d single them out here.
As a developer I can’t agree here. The docker images (not “containers” to be precise) are not there replacing deb packages. They are there because it’s easy to provide image. It’s much harder to release a set of debs, rpms and whatnot for distribution the developer isn’t even using. The other options wouldn’t even be there in the first place, because there’s only so many hours in a day and my open source work is not paying my bills most of the time. (patches and continued maintenance is of course welcome) So the alternative would be just the source code, which you still get. No one is limiting your options there. If anything the Dockerfile at least shows exactly how you can build the software yourself even without using docker. It’s just bash script with extra isolation.
Yeah please don’t do that. It’s probably not a good idea. Just build the binary or whatever you’re trying to use yourself. The binaries in image often depend on libraries inside said image which can be different from your system.
It might be easier (effort-wise) but you’re certainly not forced. At the very least you can clone the repo and just edit the Dockerfile to your liking. With compose file it’s the same story, just edit the thing. Or don’t use it at all. I frequently use compose file just for reference/documentation and run software as a set of systemd units in Nix. You do you. You don’t have to follow a path that someone paved if you don’t like the destination. Remember that it’s often someone’s free time that paid for this path, they are not obliged to provide perfect solution for you. They are not taking anything away from you by providing solution that someone else can use.
I fully agree with you that devs should not release debs&rpms&etc, that’s distro responsibility to create and manage from the binaries that the devs should release. No Dev should have to create those distro-bases formats, it’s evil and useless.
Let me be more clear: devs are not required to release binaries at all. Bit they should, if they want their work to be widely used. And in this case, providing also a binary release alongside images solves all freedom of choice issues in my opinion. Here you show me my lack of preparedness as I didn’t considered docker files as actual build instructions, I will do in the future.
I also fully agree with you that curl+pipe+bash random stuff should be banned as awful practice and that is much worse than containers in general. But posting instructions on forums and websites is not per se dangerous or a bad practice. Following them blindly is, but there is still people not wearing seatbelts in cars or helmets on bikes, so…
I was not single containers out, I was replying to a post about containers. If you read my wiki, every time a curl/pipe/bash approach is proposed, I decompose it and suggest against doing that.
Chmod 777 should be banned in any case, but that steams from containers usage (due to wrongly built images) more than anything else, so I guess you are biting your own cookie here.
Having docker files and composer file is perfectly acceptable. What is not acceptable is having only those and no binary releases. Usually sources are available (in FOSS apps at least) but that can be useless if there are no building instructions provided or the app uses some less common build stack.
On Immich, which is a perfect example of an amazing piece of software fast growing and very polished, I did try to build from sources but I couldn’t manage the ML part properly. This is indeed due to my lack of experience with the peculiar stack they are using, but some build instructions would have been appreciated greatly (now I realize I should have started from the docker files). I gave up and pulled the images. No harm done, but little extra fun for me, and while I do understand the devs position, they too keep talking about making a living out of it and that’s a totally different point to discuss on a different thread. I would suggest them that public relations and user support is more important than actually releasing an amazing product for making a living out of it. But that’s just my real world experience as product manager.
In a world where containers are the only proposed solution, I believe something will be taken from us all. Somebody else explained that concept better then me in this thread. That’s all.
Yeah, but that’s not there reality of the situation. Docker images is what drives wide adoption. Docker is also great development tool if one needs to test stuff quickly, so the Dockerfile is there from the very beginning and thus providing image is almost for free.
Binaries are more involved because suddenly you have multiple OSes, libc, musl,… it’s not always easy to build statically linked binary (and it’s also often bad idea) So it’s much less likely to happen. If you tried just running statically linked binary on NixOS, you probably know it’s not as simple as
chmod a+x.Exactly what I’m saying. People will do stupid stuff and containers have nothing to do with it.
Most of the time it’s not necessary at all. People just have “allow everything, because I have no idea where the problem could be”. Containers frequently run as root, so I’d say the chmod is not necessary.
I think you mean images not containers? I don’t think anything will be taken, image is just easy to provide, if there is no binary provided, there would likely be no binary even without docker.
In fact IIRC this practice of providing binaries is relatively new trend. (Popularized by Go I think) Back in the days you got source code and perhaps Makefile. If you were lucky a debian/src directory with code to build your package. And there was no lack of freedom.
On one hand you complain about docker images making people dumb on another you complain about absence of pre-compiled binary instead of learning how to build stuff you run. A bit of a double standard.