ove to sidebar hide Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Special pages Search Search Appearance Donate Create account Log in Personal tools Donate Create account Log in Contents move to sidebar hide (Top) 1 History Toggle History subsection 1.1 Adoption 2 Design 3 Security 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading Toggle the table of contents Podman 10 languages العربية Čeština Español Suomi Français Italiano 한국어 Polski Русский 中文 Edit links Article Talk English Read Edit View history Tools Tools move to sidebar hide Actions Read Edit View history General What links here Related changes Upload file Permanent link Page information Cite this page Get shortened URL Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item Appearance move to sidebar hide From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Daemonless OCI-compliant container runtime Podman Example of Podman commands Original author Red Hat Developer Cloud Native Computing Foundation Release 2018 [ 1 ] Stable release 5.8.3 [ 2 ] / 12 June 2026 ; 11 days ago  ( 12 June 2026 ) Written in Go Operating system Linux , Windows , macOS , FreeBSD Type OS-level virtualization License Apache-2.0 license Website podman .io   Repository github .com /podman-container-tools /podman Podman ( pod manager ) is an open source Open Container Initiative (OCI)-compliant [ 3 ] container management tool created by Red Hat used for handling containers, images , volumes , and pods on the Linux operating system , [ 4 ] with support for macOS and Microsoft Windows via a virtual machine . [ 5 ] Based on the libpod library, it offers APIs for the lifecycle management of containers, pods, images, and volumes. The API is identical to the Docker API. [ 6 ] Podman Desktop provides an alternative to Docker Desktop. [ 7 ] History [ edit ] Podman Desktop showing terminal of a container The first public release of Podman (v0.2) was released in 2018, version 1.0.0 of Podman was released on January 16th, 2019. [ 8 ] Version 1.0 of Podman Desktop was released on May 23, 2023. [ 9 ] [ 10 ] In KubeCon 2024, Red Hat announced that it will contribute Podman and Podman Desktop to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), by that point, Podman Desktop had already been downloaded 1.5 million times, [ 11 ] the projects were accepted into the CNCF on January 21, 2025. [ 12 ] [ 13 ] Adoption [ edit ] In the 2025 Stack Overflow survey, among 20,070 survey respondents identifying as professionals, 10.9% said that they had used Podman in the past year, compared to 73.8% and 30.1% for Docker and Kubernetes respectively. [ 14 ] Design [ edit ] Podman is a "daemonless" tool, [ 15 ] as opposed to other containerization systems like Docker, which uses a background service called dockerd to manage its containers, Podman relies on systemd for managing its container life cycles. [ 16 ] Security [ edit ] Podman lets containers run without root privileges (rootless), meaning they can be created, run, and managed by regular users without administrator rights by using Linux namespaces . [ 17 ] See also [ edit ] Free and open-source software portal List of Linux containers References [ edit ] ^ "Podman v0.3.5" . github . Retrieved 21 March 2026 . ^ "v5.8.3" . 12 June 2026 . Retrieved 13 June 2026 . ^ Walker, James (June 4, 2021). "What Is Podman and How Does It Differ from Docker?" . How-To Geek . ^ Primavera, Jacqueline (June 17, 2022). "What is Podman? The container engine replacing Docker" . InfoWorld . ^ Krill, Paul (May 23, 2023). "Red Hat puts Podman container management on the desktop" . InfoWorld . ^ "Podman | GoLand" . GoLand Help . ^ Walker, James (January 19, 2023). "Getting Started With Podman Desktop, an Open Source Docker Desktop Alternative" . How-To Geek . ^ "Podman v1.0.0 Released | Podman" . podman.io . 16 January 2019 . Retrieved 10 September 2025 . ^ "Podman Desktop 1.0: The next-gen container management solution streamlining developers container operations" . Red Hat Blog . Retrieved 10 September 2025 . ^ Anderson, Tim (24 May 2023). "Podman Desktop 1.0 released: a challenge to Docker Desktop • DEVCLASS" . DEVCLASS . Retrieved 10 September 2025 . ^ "Red Hat to Contribute Comprehensive Container Tools Collection to Cloud Native Computing Foundation" . Red Hat Blog . Retrieved 10 September 2025 . ^ "Podman Desktop" . CNCF . 10 September 2025 . Retrieved 10 September 2025 . ^ "Podman Container Tools" . CNCF . 10 September 2025 . Retrieved 10 September 2025 . ^ "Technology | 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey" . Stack Overfllow . Retrieved 10 September 2025 . ^ "What is Podman? — Podman documentation" . docs.podman.io . Retrieved 10 September 2025 . ^ "Containers in 2025: Docker vs. Podman for Modern Developers" . Linux Journal . Retrieved 30 November 2025 . ^ "Rootless containers with Podman" . Red Hat Developer . 25 September 2020 . Retrieved 2024-10-12 . Further reading [ edit ] "Podman in Action: Secure, Rootless Containers for Kubernetes, Microservices, and More: Walsh, Daniel: 9781633439689: Books" . learning.oreilly.com . "Podman for DevOps: Containerization reimagined with Podman and its companion tools: Arrichiello, Alessandro, Salinetti, Gianni: 9781803248233: Books" . packtpub.com . v t e Virtualization software Comparison of platform virtualization software Hardware ( hypervisors ) Native CP/CMS Hyper-V KVM oVirt LDoms / Oracle VM Server for SPARC Logical partition (LPAR) LynxSecure PikeOS Proxmox VE QNX SIMMON SmartOS VMware ESXi VMware vSphere vCloud VMware Infrastructure Xen XenServer XCP-ng z/VM Hosted Specialized Basilisk II Bochs Cooperative Linux DOSBox DOSEMU 86Box PCem PikeOS SheepShaver SIMH Windows on Windows Virtual DOS machine Win4Lin Independent bhyve Microsoft Virtual Server Parallels Workstation Extreme Parallels Desktop for Mac Parallels Server for Mac PearPC QEMU UTM VirtualBox Virtual Iron Virtual PC VMware Fusion VMware Server VMware Workstation Player Tools Ganeti System Center Virtual Machine Manager Virt-manager Operating system OS containers FreeBSD jail Linux-VServer LXC OpenVZ Solaris Containers sysjail Virtuozzo Workload Partitions Application containers Apptainer Distrobox Docker lmctfy Podman rkt Virtual kernel architectures Rump kernel User-mode Linux vkernel Related kernel features BrandZ cgroups chroot namespaces eBPF seccomp Orchestration Amazon ECS Kubernetes OpenShift Desktop Citrix Virtual Apps Citrix Virtual Desktops Omnissa Horizon Remote Desktop Services Virtual machine Application Ceedo Citrix Virtual Apps Dalvik InstallFree Microsoft App-V Remote Desktop Services Symantec Workspace Virtualization Turbo VMware ThinApp ZeroVM Network Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet (DOVE) Ethernet VPN (EVPN) NVGRE Open vSwitch Virtual security switch Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation (GENEVE) See also BlueStacks See also: List of emulators , List of computer system emulators This free and open-source software article is a stub . You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information . v t e Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Podman&oldid=1347626671 " Categories : Containerization software Software using the Apache license Free software programmed in Go Red Hat software Linux Foundation projects Linux containerization Free and open-source software stubs Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata All stub articles This page was last edited on 7 April 2026, at 20:04  (UTC) . Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. , a non-profit organization. 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