01 Overview
Podman runs OCI containers without a background daemon and without root by default, which makes it a common drop-in for Docker on RHEL-family systems and in security-conscious CI environments. Most `docker` commands work unchanged as `podman`.
→ official documentation02 Installation
Pick a platform. Each step is copy-pasteable on its own.
01 Update package index
sudo apt-get update
02 Install Podman
sudo apt-get install -y podman
03 Verify
podman run hello-world
01 Install Podman (native on RHEL-family)
sudo dnf install -y podman
02 Verify
podman run hello-world
01 Install via Homebrew
brew install podman
02 Initialize and start the Podman VM
podman machine init podman machine start
03 Verify
podman run hello-world
Note — commands assume sudo privileges and an up-to-date package index. Pin a specific version in production rather than tracking latest.
03 Install script
The steps above bundled into a single idempotent shell script for provisioning boxes unattended.
install-podman.sh
Ubuntu/Debian target · safe to re-run · exits non-zero on failure
04 Cheatsheet
The commands reached for most often once Podman is installed.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| podman ps | List running containers |
| podman run -d -p 8080:80 name | Run a container in the background |
| podman build -t name:tag . | Build an image from a Containerfile |
| podman pod create --name app | Create a pod grouping several containers |
| podman generate systemd --name app | Generate a systemd unit for a container |
| podman machine start | Start the Linux VM backing Podman on macOS |