Red Hat Podman Desktop

The main items are:

• Virtualization. Classification and applications
• IT containers

2023: Podman Desktop 1.0 with GUI for Container Management

On May 25, 2023, it became known that Red Hat published a significant release of the Podman Desktop application with a GUI implementation for creating, launching and managing containers, competing with products such as Rancher Desktop and Docker Desktop. Podman Desktop allows developers who do not have system administration skills to create, run, test and publish microservices and applications developed for container isolation systems on their workstation before deploying them in working environments. Podman Desktop code is written in TypeScript using the Electron platform and distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. Ready-made builds are prepared for Linux, Windows and macOS.

It is supported integration with platforms Kubernetes and, OpenShift as well as the use of various runtime to execute containers, such as Podman Engine, Podman Lima, crc and Docker Engine. The environment on the local developer system can mirror the configuration of the working environment in which ready-made applications are running (among other things, multi-node clusters of Kubernetes and OpenShift environments can be simulated on the local system). Support for additional engines for launching containers, providers Kubernetes and tools can be implemented in the form of add-ons to Podman Desktop. For example, add-ons are available to locally run the OpenShift Local single-node cluster and connect cloud service to the OpenShift Developer Sandbox.

Tools are provided for managing container images, working with pod-AMIs and partitions, assembling images from Containerfile and Dockerfile, connecting to containers through the terminal, loading images from OCI container registers and publishing their images to them, managing the resources available in containers (memory, CPU, storage).

Podman Desktop can also be used to convert container images and connect to both local container isolation engines and external infrastructure based on Kubernetes to host their pods and generate YAML files for Kubernetes or run Kubernetes YAML on a local system without Kubernetes.

It is possible to minimize the application into a system tray for quick control through a widget, which allows, without distraction from development, to assess the state of containers, stop and start containers, manage environments based on the Podman and Kind^[1] toolkits^[2].

Notes