New? It was released ~2018. Docker was released ~2013.

Far from “shiny new”, but at this time the pace of development is such that there doesn’t exist a stable version that accepts bugfixes only, make of it what you will.

As a development tool it’s awesome, and having no centralized daemon is sure a boon.

Podman is a Docker implementation without the architectural bugs.

and twice the networking bugs

It has this awkward situation where CNI is old and boring and missing just a couple thing, while Netavark/Aardvark is the new shiny Wayland of container networking but can't handle half of the use cases CNI used to handle just fine.

I wanted to have a separate network on a bridge, visible to the host, where IP addresses and DNS would be managed by a dedicated DHCP/DNS service (like what dnsmasq can do). Well imagine, unless you jump through a whole lot of hoops and use macvlan and whatnot, netavark just plain cannot do it.

I heard one could make a netavark plugin quite easily, but interfaces for DNS and IPAM are missing from the puzzle.

It does has some quirks that is why I keep using docker for containers on servers.

I do use podman daily in the form of distrobox since both the steam deck and my desktop are immutable systems.

I really wanted to like immutable OS and Distrobox but I’ve run into so many issues and there are just some things that are significantly harder to do inside a container. Not to mention the subtle differences between podman and docker and it’s just too much tinkering for me when I’m trying to actively work on a project.

As much as it pains me to say this, I think nixos might be my next path.