Summary

In this chapter, we have discussed the main differences between Podman and Docker, both from architectural and usage points of view. We described the main building blocks of the two container engines and highlighted the different community projects that fuel the Podman project, especially OCI specifications and the runC and crun runtimes.

The purpose of this book is not to debate why and how Podman could be a better choice than Docker. We think that everybody who works with containers should be extremely grateful to the Docker company and community for the great work they did in bringing containers to the masses and freeing them from niche adoption.

At the same time, the evolutionary approach of open source software facilitates the birth of new projects that try to compete to be adopted. Ever since it was born, the Podman project has grown exponentially and gained a wider user base day by day.

Understanding the engine internals is still an important task, anyway....