this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
60 points (91.7% liked)

Selfhosted

40183 readers
690 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
60
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Hi, I've been thinking for a few days whether I should learn Docker or Podman. I know that Podman is more FOSS and I like it more in theory, but maybe it's better to start with docker, for which there is a lot more tutorials. On the other hand, maybe it's better to straight up learn podman when I don't know any of the two and not having to change habits later. What do you think? For context, I know how containers works in theory, I know some linux I think well, but I never actually used docker nor podman. In another words: If I want to eventually end up with Podman, is it easier to start with docker and then learn Podman, or start with Podman right away? Thanks in advance

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Do you object to software repositories that install dependencies precompiled?

Your "lines in the sand" seem idiosyncratic and arbitrary. You are happy presumably to use precompiled software or at the very least rely on software written by others which is already ceding some freedom but then claim that using systems that package all the dependencies into a single runnable unit is too much and cedes too much freedom?

I agree that containers are allowing software projects to push release engineering and testing down stream and cut corners a bit but that was ever the case with precomplied releases that were only tested on a single version of a single distro.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Look this isn't even about "drawing lines in the sand", I do understand why use containers and I use them in certain circumstances, usually not Docker but that's more due to the requirements in said circumstances and not about personal decision.

Do you object to software repositories that install dependencies precompiled? (...) but then claim that using systems that package all the dependencies into a single runnable unit is too much and cedes too much freedom?

No and I never claimed that. I'm perfectly happy to use a single-binary statically linked applications, in fact I use quite a few such as FileBrowser and Syncthing and they're very good and reasonable software. Docker however isn't one of those cases or, at least, not just that.

I agree that containers are allowing software projects to push release engineering and testing down stream and cut corners a bit

Docker is being used and abused for cutting corners and now we've developers that are just unable to deploy any piece of software without it. They've zero understanding of infrastructure and anything related to it and this has a big negative impact on the way they develop software. I'm not just talking about FOSS projects, we see this in the enterprise and bootcamps as well.

Docker is a powerful thing, so powerful it opens the door for poorly put together software to exist and succeed as it abstracts people from having to understand architectures, manually install and configure dependencies and things that anyone sane would be able to do in a lifetime. This is why we sometimes see "solutions" that run 10 instances of some database or some other abnormality.

Besides all that, it adds the half-open repository situation on top. While we can host repositories and use open ones the most common thing is to see everything on Docker Hub and that might turn into a CentOS style situation anytime.