The RedHat-sponsored Podman and Podman Desktop projects are evolving rapidly, with new and recent features including OCI (Open Container Initiative) artifact support in Podman, experimental features in Podman Desktop, and an AI Lab extension for testing LLMs (large language models) locally.
Podman is an open-source container management engine suitable for developing with containers or small-scale deployments. It is an alternative to Docker with aims to be a compatible drop-in replacement though in practice compatibility is not perfect. Unlike Docker, Podman runs rootless by default, for better security. Another difference is that Podman Desktop is open source under the Apache 2.0 license, whereas Docker Desktop is a commercial product.
The newly released Podman Desktop 1.16 surfaces experimental features in a dedicated settings section, including Docker compatibility preferences, searchable logs, and control over which Kubernetes contexts are monitored.
A new release of Podman itself is also in preparation, with the big feature in version 5.4 being a preview of new commands for working with OCI artifacts. Release Candidate 2 was released a few days ago, though regarding OCI artifacts, the release notes state that “this support is very early and not fully complete, and the command line interface for these tools has not been finalized.”
Red Hat software engineer Brent Baude explained: “artifacts are files that can be stored on OCI registries and used in conjunction with containerized applications.” Podman already supports artifacts through manifest files, but new commands simplify working with artifacts and planned features include creating volumes from artifacts that can then be attached to a container at runtime.
Podman AI Lab is an extension for working with LLMs and has experimental GPU support on Windows and macOS, which is recommended despite its status, since it greatly improves performance. The tool includes a model catalog, playground environments enabling chat with the AI, model services via an OpenAI-compatible web server, and AI templates in a Recipes Catalog.
Quadlets are another key Podman feature, enabling multiple containers to be configured to start on boot and restart on failure, via integration with system on Linux. A Quadlet configuration is similar in concept to a Docker Compose or Kubernetes manifest. Quadlets are a simpler alternative to a local Kubernetes cluster for development and also suitable for small-scale deployments.
In November 2024 the Podman team applied for Podman and Podman Desktop to become sandbox projects at the CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation), stating that this would give the project increased visibility, a neutral home, and more attention from other CNCF projects. Buildah, a tool for building OCI (Open Container Initiative) container images, and Scopeo, a command-line utility for working with images and image repositories, are also being submitted to the CNCF. The CNCF technical organizing committee will review and vote on the application around May 2025.
Red Hat and its community is putting considerable effort into Podman and its associated projects; yet it remains under Docker’s shadow as developers see safety in the better-known and more mature offering – perhaps the key issue that the team hopes CNCF adoption will address.