How to install Podman on Ubuntu 22.04 | Linux Mint 21

Welcome friends. In this post, you will learn how to install Podman on Ubuntu 22.04 and Linux Mint 21. This is the main alternative to Docker that is supported by RHEL.

What is Podman?

Podman is an alternative to Docker that is backed by Red Hat and IBM. The open-source project has a great ease of use, which is a big draw among developers.

Well, one of the differences is that it is not based on daemons (services in the *nix world). One of the advantages is that Docker has a single daemon that when it handles many containers grows and grows, becoming much heavier.

This last point is where Podman wants to be a solid alternative to Docker and is where Podman bases its reason.

Let’s go for it.

Install Podman on Ubuntu 22.04 | Linux Mint 21

Since Podman is a heavily sponsored open-source project, it is not surprising that it is available in the official Ubuntu repositories.

So open a terminal and make sure your system is up-to-date.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Then, you will be able to get information about the podman package

apt show podman

Then you will have an output screen similar to this

Package: podman
Version: 3.4.4+ds1-1ubuntu1

Now you can install Podman by running

sudo apt install podman

And you can check the version that has been installed.

podman --version
podman version 3.4.4

If you want additional information about Podman you can run

podman info

As you can see, the output screen contains more information.

host:
  arch: amd64
  buildahVersion: 1.23.1
  cgroupControllers:
  - memory
  - pids
  cgroupManager: cgroupfs
  cgroupVersion: v2
  conmon:
    package: 'conmon: /usr/bin/conmon'
    path: /usr/bin/conmon
    version: 'conmon version 2.0.25, commit: unknown'
  cpus: 2
  distribution:
    codename: jammy
    distribution: ubuntu
    version: "22.04"
  eventLogger: journald
  hostname: unixcop
  idMappings:
    gidmap:
    - container_id: 0
      host_id: 1000
      size: 1
    - container_id: 1
      host_id: 100000
      size: 65536
    uidmap:
    - container_id: 0
      host_id: 1000
      size: 1
    - container_id: 1
      host_id: 100000
      size: 65536
  kernel: 5.15.0-41-generic

Before using it, you can modify the /etc/containers/registries.conf file to define the image search settings.

nano /etc/containers/registries.conf

At the end of the file add

unqualified-search-registries = [ 'registry.access.redhat.com', 'registry.redhat.io', 'docker.io']

Save the file and close it.

The usage is very similar to Docker. So, it’s basically the same.

Conclusion

Podman is the most solid alternative to Docker. One that aims to better manage processes and thus resource consumption at a high level.

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