podman vs flatpak

podman

Podman: A tool for managing OCI containers and pods. (by containers)

Source Code

podman.io

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flatpak

Linux application sandboxing and distribution framework (by flatpak)

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Source Code

flatpak.org

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podman		flatpak
	Project
358	Mentions	431
21,729	Stars	4,055
3.4%	Growth	1.7%
10.0	Activity	9.2
2 days ago	Latest Commit	1 day ago
Go	Language	C
Apache License 2.0	License	GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 only

The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

podman

Posts with mentions or reviews of podman. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-03-26.

Podman 5.0 has been released
2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Mar 2024

Example of why: https://github.com/containers/podman/issues/5102#issuecommen...
Exploring 5 Docker Alternatives: Containerization Choices for 2024
3 projects | dev.to | 18 Mar 2024

Podman
Podman 5.0.0: final release candidate
1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Mar 2024
A Gentle Introduction to Containerization and Docker
4 projects | dev.to | 13 Mar 2024

Even though we will focus on Docker for this article, I wanted to mention that there are more container creation and management tools such as Podman, Rkt, and so on.
A Journey to Find an Ultimate Development Environment
13 projects | dev.to | 2 Feb 2024

By using containerization, the application will always have the same configuration that is used in the development environment and production environment. There is no more "It works on my machine". Some examples of containerization technologies are Docker and Podman.
Anatomy of Docker
1 project | dev.to | 15 Jan 2024

Podman Documentation. Podman is a daemonless container engine for developing, managing, and running OCI Containers on your Linux System.
Exploring Podman: A More Secure Docker Alternative
6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 13 Jan 2024

AFAIK podman either already supports pods in quadlet container files, or will in the near future. https://github.com/containers/podman/pull/20762
Podman Desktop 1.6 released: Even more Kubernetes and Containers features
6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 20 Dec 2023

Podman as a devcontainers engine doesn't currently work if you use devcontainer features [1] or (and this sounds like you're issue) if you use WSL2.
I haven't submitted the WSL2 issue to the Podman team yet. If you get to it before I do, can you like it here?
https://github.com/containers/podman/issues/18691#issuecomme...
Oracle data base
2 projects | /r/Fedora | 10 Dec 2023

You can also use their Oracle Linux Docker images with the database preinstalled using either Podman or Docker. Just make absolutely sure you are downloading something you are licensed to use, because it seems really easy to accidentally infringe copyright via this method.
A call for Podman comparison charts
2 projects | /r/podman | 8 Dec 2023

It's an open source project. https://github.com/containers/podman and https://podman.io - go there, get engaged, see what's going on and most important become part of the community and contribute!

flatpak

Posts with mentions or reviews of flatpak. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-03-27.

Tools for Linux Distro Hoppers
7 projects | dev.to | 27 Mar 2024

Hopping from one distro to another with a different package manager might require some time to adapt. Using a package manager that can be installed on most distro is one way to help you get to work faster. Flatpak is one of them; other alternative are Snap, Nix or Homebrew. Flatpak is a good starter, and if you have a bunch of free time, I suggest trying Nix.
Podman Desktop 1.6 released: Even more Kubernetes and Containers features
6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 20 Dec 2023

No, it looks like you have to do it on an application basis.
https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/2913
how strong is the steam (runtime) sandbox for games?
2 projects | /r/linux_gaming | 10 Dec 2023
Flatpak 1.14.5 Released
1 project | /r/linux_gaming | 8 Dec 2023

1 project | /r/Boiling_Steam | 8 Dec 2023
Been thinking of switching to linux but I am a noob
8 projects | /r/linux_gaming | 6 Dec 2023

Flatpak
FLaNK Stack Weekly for 20 Nov 2023
37 projects | dev.to | 20 Nov 2023
Flathub – The Linux App Store
9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Nov 2023

> CLI tools do not implement auto-complete themselves. What you are seeing are auto-complete scripts for your shell that make network connections.
nit: This is incorrect. Robust auto-complete scripts call the actual program to provide completions.
That is what Flatpak does. It is Flatpak itself that makes the network connections.
https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/blob/main/completion/flat...
Not that it would make any differencen if it was implemented in Bash seeing as the Bash script is also provided by Flatpak.
How to prevent/allow chrome from accessing network devices?
1 project | /r/flatpak | 22 Sep 2023
Linux Phones (2022)
1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Sep 2023

The only performance impact I know of is with the seccomp filter in CPU-bound tasks: https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/4187
Skimming through the recent comments, there might be a way to optimize some of it.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing podman and flatpak you can also consider the following projects:

Portainer - Making Docker and Kubernetes management easy.

steam-runtime - A runtime environment for Steam applications

lima - Linux virtual machines, with a focus on running containers

firejail - Linux namespaces and seccomp-bpf sandbox

kaniko - Build Container Images In Kubernetes

Autodesk-Fusion-360-for-Linux - This is a project, where I give you a way to use Autodesk Fusion 360 on Linux!

rancher - Complete container management platform

distrobox - Use any linux distribution inside your terminal. Enable both backward and forward compatibility with software and freedom to use whatever distribution you’re more comfortable with. Mirror available at: https://gitlab.com/89luca89/distrobox

containerd - An open and reliable container runtime

nix-gui - Use NixOS Without Coding

nerdctl - contaiNERD CTL - Docker-compatible CLI for containerd, with support for Compose, Rootless, eStargz, OCIcrypt, IPFS, ...

com.valvesoftware.Steam