multipass VS Podman Desktop

Multipass orchestrates virtual Ubuntu instances

Multipass I love Multipass for quick Ubuntu instances spun up for testing or as a playground. Wish I would have known and used of it sooner.

If you just need Ubuntu then you can try "Multipass" from Canonical (https://multipass.run/). Works quite well on my M2 Air. I haven't tried using Linux GUI with it though as I need only terminal based VMs.

Multipass is pretty clutch for trivial VMs on MacOs for sure. I use it for a bunch of ssh jump boxes running vpns to different sites. The macOS build does not support custom images (lest not without [some truly insane hacks](https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/1260#issuecomm...) , which doesn’t really matter for what I use it for but it is kind of a bummer. If you need something with a little more grunt but don’t want to go full blown with writing your own QEMU tooling or fussing with something like UTM or Parallels, [quickemu](https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickemu) is a really nice qemu wrapper with sane defaults that can expose a whole lot of power if you need it.

I would be cautious or even distrustful of using anything from Oracle. VirtualBox components come under three different licenses - GPLv2, personal use & evaluation license, and an enterprise license. Their VirtualBox license FAQ [1] gives them enough leeway to change future licenses at will. If an exploit is discovered in your old VirtualBox and they've changed the license, you're out of luck.

We've moved our development to KVM and Virtual Machine Manager on Linux [3] and UTM on Mac [4]. There are other options to run your VM, such as Multipass [5] or VirtualBuddy [6].

On a digressive topic - it was fun migrating our legacy application server stack from Oracle Java (old & poorly considered decision) to OpenJDK, thanks to their license [2].

[1] https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ

[2] https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/jdk-faqs.htm...

[3] https://ubuntu.com/blog/kvm-hyphervisor

[4] https://mac.getutm.app/

[5] https://multipass.run/

[6] https://github.com/insidegui/VirtualBuddy

How does it compare to https://multipass.run/?

If you have a reasonably beefy computer, you can always try setting up Multipass and set up 2-3 nodes for a k8s cluster, it's how I'm doing my own certification training. I do have a k3s Raspberry Pi cluster, but with Pi prices being what they are still it'd almost be cheaper to do a cloud setup. ☹️

Whenever I need a VM on my MacOS I reach out to Multipass[1].

It is a project by Canonical and has a decent amount of features to get the job done. However, it only supports Ubuntu VMs and has some rough edges.

[1] https://multipass.run/

A new, search-driven command palette is now available to enable quick access to various commands available across 🦭 Podman Desktop. You can try this new tool out by hitting the F1 key. #4081 && #3979

Please share this experience and what went wrong with the postman team. It is the only way things can improve.

You don’t have to solve the problem. Just state your problem. If you need inspiration, here is an example: https://github.com/containers/podman-desktop/issues/868

I wanted to try a while ago so I downloaded Podman Desktop, but I couldn't get past the initial setup due to issues in the desktop app. I was able to reproduce this on two or three Macs, can't recall exactly.

It has been a long-standing issue but seems as though it is on its way to resolution: https://github.com/containers/podman-desktop/issues/1633.

I am waiting for a few months to make sure it is all sorted and will try again to see if it works then.

I'm not happy with Podman Desktop's Svelte GUI.

Antd or MUI (React) feel much more mature.

But they are working on it.

https://github.com/containers/podman-desktop/pull/2863

I don't know if that's really a core difference from podman. Assuming I track your meaning Podman has GUI management as well and it can be made to integrate with system and can produce Kubernetes manifests from the pods you define locally.

Optional extensions will follow their own lifecycle and update independently from Podman Desktop. As of this release you'll be able to see when there is an update available and install from within Podman Desktop #2655.

Podman Desktop 0.15 embeds Podman 4.5 in Windows and macOS installers #2115.

u/Chunkypewpewpew it's karpersky that has a false positive https://github.com/containers/podman-desktop/issues/700

Podman Desktop has a new release: you can check milestone v0.11.0 and Release Notes

> docker desktop is pretty dead now that it's got restrictive licensing etc...

It would probably be nice to hear more about why you think this is! I've certainly heard of some having to move away from Docker Desktop.

However, at the scale where you need a license (250 employees or 10 million $ in annual revenue) it's not quite as big of an issue, especially at their current pricing per seat: https://www.docker.com/pricing/

> stick to standard open source tools like Colima etc...

Sticking to open source is a great idea!

I think mentioning that Colima runs on macOS and Linux only at the moment is also a good idea: https://github.com/abiosoft/colima

A large market share of the Docker Desktop installs are Windows in particular (since it's "the one way" how most install Docker nowadays, as opposed to not really needing a GUI or the supporting tools on Linux).

In another comment I mentioned Podman Desktop as a mostly viable alternative: https://github.com/containers/podman-desktop

Then there's also Rancher Desktop as well: https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop

Regardless, it's nice to see reputable orgs behind the open source projects as well, which gives a bit more credence to their chances of surviving for the years to come.