Huge Distrobox fan

Posted Dec 12, 2025 10:51 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: Huge Distrobox fan by jmalcolm
Parent article: Mix and match Linux distributions with Distrobox

This sounds like a very useful tool... but... docker is a complete dumpster fire.

Does it still work well with the other 2 supported container tools, podman and this 'lilipod'?

dumpsterfire ... tell us more

Posted Dec 13, 2025 12:25 UTC (Sat) by grmnsftphr (subscriber, #178591) [Link]

can you be more specific what your problems are with docker than dumpsterfire?

From my own experience from working with the takeaway that Docker simply works, unless you insist on sticking with the ancient Debian packages.

In contrast, podman had many incompatbilities, not last to the completely undiagnosable network stack... which is following the Douglas Adams model and thus constantly getting completely rewritten. This isn't safe nor secure.

The podman code base has quite some quality issues such as incorrect usage of contexts and left-over API experiments. This was acknowledged on the issue tracker but it's don't fix.

I've written Docker drivers and can say from first hand experience that the Docker code base is quite good to understand. In contrast I had so many w-t-fs with podman code and their totally broken APIs, both Docker "compatible" and proprietary, that after months of work on podman-native support I decided to archive my project.

Similar experiences can be seen from other projects where podman doesn't really reliably work on broader scope and non-trivial setups.