Red Hat is betting a commercially supported Podman Desktop can lure corporate developers away from Docker Desktop.
Red Hat is perhaps the biggest name in enterprise Linux, but it’s also a major cloud-native player thanks to its Kubernetes distribution, OpenShift. What it hasn’t had, though, is a supported, enterprise build of its own open source, container-oriented desktop app… until now. The recent release of the Red Hat build of Podman Desktop is the company’s bet that a tight integration with OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) will make Podman Desktop’s container-native workflows attractive to corporate developers.
Podman Desktop is a popular, open source Docker‑compatible container engine. It features a graphical front end that enables developers to manage containers, images, pods, and local Kubernetes from a single UI.
Why?
Red Hat contributed it to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation in January 2025, where it is currently a sandbox project. So if Red Hat already supports Podman, why launch this new version? According to Red Hat, customers were asking for it.
“Until now, many teams have had to rely on unsupported open source tools or alternatives that lack the service-level agreements (SLAs) required for work,” the company writes in its announcement. “The Red Hat build of Podman Desktop is a vendor-backed solution that comes with official Red Hat support, providing access to security fixes, product engineers and container experts. For IT decision-makers and platform engineers, this means more predictable lifecycle management, security patching, and the ability to manage container tools across thousands of workstations from Day 1.”
What the Red Hat build of Podman Desktop brings to the table is a vendor-backed desktop application for Linux, macOS, and Windows. It includes access to Red Hat support, security fixes, and product engineering.
Enterprise-ready desktop container management
Positioned as “enterprise-ready local container development,” it is currently in technical preview and available through Red Hat’s developer channels for qualified customers. Red Hat pitches the offering as a way to lower the barrier to using containers by allowing developers to build, run, and debug containers and pods without deep command-line knowledge, while still aligning with corporate platforms and policies.
Technically, this new build comes with — Surprise! — tighter coupling with OpenShift and local Kubernetes environments. This move reflects Red Hat’s broader strategy to make the laptop a faithful stand‑in for production clusters.
From the Podman Desktop GUI, developers can group containers into pods, generate Kubernetes YAML, and deploy to local clusters such as Kind or Minikube, as well as to remote OpenShift clusters and services like Red Hat OpenShift Local and Developer Sandbox. The Red Hat build adds curated extensions for building and testing Open Container Initiative-compliant bootable container images tied to RHEL “image mode.”
Red Hat is also using this desktop client as a policy enforcement point for organizations that struggle to reconcile developer agility with locked-down networks. With this corporate take on Podman, administrators can define and deploy a default configuration across fleets of machines, including registry mirrors, internal registries, HTTP proxies, and custom security certificates. Managers can also lock key settings so users cannot override corporate security rules. The application also validates managed configurations at startup. This helps ensure that new proxy endpoints, certificate updates, or registry policies are enforced the next time your developers open their local environment.
While Podman Desktop has existed as an upstream project for some time, Red Hat is explicitly targeting organizations that want Docker-style workflows without relying on the full Docker toolchain. The desktop tool supports Dockerfiles and Docker Compose via Podman’s Docker command aliasing. This will make migrating from existing Docker-based projects and scripts easier.
On Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Podman is already included with subscriptions. Podman Desktop can be installed directly from the RHEL extensions repository, where it is delivered as Red Hat-signed software alongside other curated developer tools. When installed this way, Podman Desktop automatically detects the underlying Podman engine on RHEL and binds to it, providing a graphical front end that mirrors the same container stack used in production.
The supported desktop build lands amid a broader Red Hat effort to promote Podman and its ecosystem as a first-class alternative to Docker in enterprise settings. This comes after Red Hat has already donated Podman and related tools, the Podman Container Tools, such as Buildah, Skopeo, bootc, and Composefs, to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). This frames the Podman stack as a community-governed counterpart to proprietary container tooling while keeping a supported path for customers.
That said, Red Hat is late to the commercially supported container developer environment market. Docker Desktop, Rancher Desktop, and Portainer Business Edition have been available for years. On the other hand, transforming Podman into a managed, policy-aware workstation environment that fits into OpenShift‑centric pipelines strikes me as a very attractive option for businesses built on the Red Hat software stack.
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Comments
The best alternative to Docker Desktop on macOS is to abandon the GUI entirely use colima to create the linux VM.
then add this line to your $HOME/.docker/config.jsonbrew install colima docker docker-buildx docker-completion docker-compose export DOCKER_HOST="$HOME/.colima/docker.sock" >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc colima start --cpus 8 --vz-rosetta --ssh-agent --mount $HOME:w
that will get you a fast virtiofs VM with the latest docker, including compose and buildx. it may seem scary to replace an officially blessed tool like Docker Desktop, but i have had zero issues with colima. it isn't "docker compatible". it's docker. just need to run `brew upgrade` and `colima update` every once in a while to keep it up to date."cliPluginsExtraDirs": ["/opt/homebrew/lib/docker/cli-plugins"],By jpalmer 2026-02-2518:19 I've been using Finch (https://runfinch.com/) for the last few years, it basically is a managed Lima, nerdctl, containerd and BuildKit.
I just alias docker to finch and it just works.
By seemaze 2026-02-2518:16 If you're going full CLI on macOS, I've had the best experience with:
Podman manages the linux vm for you automatically.brew install podmanI've come to enjoy podman more than docker on my linux hosts anway; the default runtime (crun) is lighter than docker (runc), podman-kube-play is great for managing multi-container pods and is compatible with kubernetes. It also integrates very neatly with systemd. Of course there is the whole daemon-less and rootless side of the things as well..
I’ve been using OrbStack instead of Docker Desktop and gotta say, I’d not replace it with anything else. So if anyones looking for a more automated alternative, check out OrbStack.
By cathalc 2026-02-2516:55 I hear great things about OrbStack; unfortunately the licensing tied to their free offering doesn't play nicely with corporate environments (and we're cheap!).
I switched to Colima instead and couldn't be happier.
By a456463 2026-02-2519:19 Thank you!!! Been struggling with time skew on Podman desktop for around a year now with no fix in sight. At least in the initial test since I saw your comment a few hours ago, this is working great!
By jaimehrubiks 2026-02-2516:071 reply Does this support volume bind mounts and port forwarding?
By Alifatisk 2026-02-2516:32 You can see the command above mounting a volume
”—mount $HOME:w”
By raulparada 2026-02-2521:01 Tried Podman about a month ago; UI was kinda meh, 'compose' was beyond unusable... then tried Colima (+ lazydocker, a lightweight, beautiful TUI providing the little overview I need) and haven't looked back for a single second.
By hmokiguess 2026-02-2518:18 Same, been running on colima for years now and haven't had a single issue with it
By stock_toaster 2026-02-2517:09 I you fancy needing a GUI, rancher desktop is decent.
By bmurphy1976 2026-02-2514:4710 reply I tried to use podman desktop for a bit but I ran into some screwy compatibility issues. It just wasn't as smooth as docker.
I really really want an alternative to docker desktop. I don't like the path they're going down. I don't like the AI crap in the UI. The licensing is crazy. It just doesn't feel right.
So I've been lately using rancher by SuSE. Surprisingly, it's been all right. So far it just works. I'm using this on Mac OS.
If anybody's looking for an alternative that's one worth considering.
I'm still confused by why anyone wants to use either Docker or Podman desktops. The the docker/Podman CLIs seem like a much better way to interact with containers/images. Maybe it's just my usecase.
I can't speak to docker, but the Podman desktop UI on MacOS doesn't really offer any functionality that the CLI doesn't. It's more like a status dashboard than anything else. I personally never look at it. I don't see how you can get very far managing containers, images, etc using _just_ the UI in any case.
By scuff3d 2026-02-2517:29 Agreed. To be honest I feel the same way about k8s. A bunch of people on my team get grumpy if we don't have k9s available or some other interface, but I prefer to just use kubectl
By mort96 2026-02-2518:38 I personally use Docker Desktop because it was the easiest way to install Docker on my Mac. I launch Docker Desktop, close the window but keep the app running in the background, then use the docker tool on the command line :)
By dizhn 2026-02-2611:36 The API is pretty extensive too. It works on a local socket that you can start on demand. (Lest people think there's a daemon or root requirement)
By chuckadams 2026-02-2515:154 reply OrbStack is a very compelling alternative on macOS. The GUI launches instantly due to being a Swift app and not Electron. Container filesystems are visible in Finder. You can spin up full-blown VMs with it (only Linux ones though). Storage is managed dynamically, so you don't have to reserve or resize the virtual disk. Free for personal use, with zero nags or upsells.
By Shebanator 2026-02-2518:351 reply Does anyone know if the company is still active. Haven't seen any updates for a while now. I like the product a lot, but products like this need security updates at the very least.
By chuckadams 2026-02-2523:50 Last release was November 2025 which isn't that terribly long ago. https://docs.orbstack.dev/release-notes. They do look to have stopped blogging on orbstack.dev for more than a year now. They have a discord channel, but I'm not up for dealing with discord to check on it.
By pratio 2026-02-2515:29 I can attest, Orbstack has been a gamechanger. Happily paying for the pro license.
How are you deploying? I’m on dokploy so I’m not sure of compatibility
By chuckadams 2026-02-2515:25 I use good old `docker compose`. It's 100% compatible, since it uses the same moby engine underneath. I've also run k3d on it, so I'm pretty sure it'll handle anything you throw at it.
By moltar 2026-02-2515:19 Orb is definitely the winner. It’s fast. It does the job well. Never had an issue with it in two years.
What sort of compatibility issues were you encountering? (disclaimer: I'm on the Podman Desktop team)
If it was compose + docker compatibility issues, that's on the roadmap for improvement :). Compose support is flakey at times (it's essentially a wrapper around the open source binary https://github.com/docker/compose)
By enlightens 2026-02-2514:571 reply The most common one I run into is with volumes, when the full path doesn't already exist. Docker will just make the path, Podman throws an error. It's been called a "bug" in docker but the fact is everyone just expects the paths to be created. I want it to just work, not make everyone in the industry redo their dockerfiles to be "correct."
https://github.com/containers/podman/issues/6234
It looks like there was some work done to resolve this in 2023 and 2024 but I know this was still happening for me in mid 2025. Podman is technically correct here but functionally broken in a way that keeps pushing me away because I don't have time to deal with that :(
By lukeschlather 2026-02-2516:341 reply Running a docker container having side effects on the host seems bad. You've just convinced me a little bit I want podman, and not docker.
By newsoftheday 2026-02-2517:131 reply Not me, docker is the standard, works great for me, if it didn't, I'd look at alternatives.
By dizhn 2026-02-2611:37 Podman also works great but one has to stop trying to use it as if it were docker.
I’ve encountered this one:
https://github.com/containers/buildah/issues/6460
Also, there’s Podman’s decision to drop CNI support. Sure, I get that they want to support the full stack, but netavark is really not especially capable, and CNI allows all kinds of interesting (and frequently overcomplicated) things.
By amluto 2026-02-2522:26 > https://github.com/containers/buildah/issues/6460
This was just fixed today :)
By fodkodrasz 2026-02-2515:41 I had issues with performance/power management, and had to abandon Podman Desktop on Windows. Have not checked out recently, but my issues may possibly be solved by
https://github.com/podman-desktop/podman-desktop/issues/1035...
Basically I had a 5 second periodic CPU spike after some update. Also I had some compose issues, and some issue with Fedora based WSL. These together were blockers for me at that point, but I'm using podman on my pet Fedora server, and it works (using quadlets there) perfectly there, and will retry it on Windows also when I get the time.
By jph 2026-02-2518:30 If you're open to questions, I'm switching my teams from Docker to Podman on macOS. I'm hitting blockers for multi-user setups i.e. each developer has a non-admin account on the machine, whereas brew runs in its own account with admin permissions.
I would love a way to have Podman installable in userspace meaning in a non-admin account, or installable without brew, or with a dependency list such as QEMU or whatever else needs to be installed by an admin ahead of time, or with a sudousers config list, etc.
I know this is an atypical setup. Any advice from anyone here is much appreciated about multi-user non-admin macOS container setup for Podman or Docker or equivalent.
By silverwind 2026-02-2519:02 No watch support in compose: https://github.com/containers/podman-compose/issues/792
By bmurphy1976 2026-02-2617:14 It's been a couple months so I don't remember the details. I am however a heavy compose user to this so promising. I don't any ill will towards the project, just waiting for it to fit my needs.
By davidsainez 2026-02-2518:061 reply I put off podman for a while because of claims of compatibility issues, which is unfortunate because I've had an excellent experience since switching over. Can you point as specific issues you've had (not doubting, just curious)?
I also have heard a lot of recommendations for OrbStack, but I haven't had problems with speed either. And I could never stomach using a proprietary system for such a core part of my workflow.
For context I use containers for practically everything and I run some decently complex workflows on them: fullstack node codebases, networking, persistent volumes, mounting, watch mode, etc. Red Hat knocked it out of the park with podman!
By mort96 2026-02-2518:40 I've had a ton of issues trying to use Podman instead of Docker on Fedora. SELinux keeps blocking Podman from doing stuff it needs to, while Docker just works.
I've also experienced Podman "getting stuck" sometimes: it's just running a build, but ctrl+c somehow doesn't stop the build system and instead freezes Podman. Doesn't really happen with Docker.
By zitterbewegung 2026-02-2515:32 I love rancher too and I have less issues of docker using all of my local disk. Learned about it at a local Python meetup.
By trueismywork 2026-02-2515:282 reply Sorrt for may be a complete ignorant question but whats the use case of docker desktop as opposed docker cli
By dns_snek 2026-02-2515:37 Docker Engine (the "CLI") only works on Linux. "Desktop" is supposed to offer a unified experience across platforms, it offers a GUI, ships Docker Engine inside a virtual machine so that it works on Windows and MacOS, and tries to make the VM as transparent/invisible as possible (with varying success) with filesystem mounts and network configuration.
By normie3000 2026-02-2517:171 reply Why would you want that?
By kkapelon 2026-02-2614:47 Because several developers that work with docker also deploy to Kubernetes. So docker-desktop is a one-click method to get both on your workstation and deploy locally.
By nsbk 2026-02-2515:12 Another alternative (although Mac OS-only) is [0] OrbStack. Some devs in my team are running it as a more performant alternative to Docker Desktop for Mac and they are very happy so far.
[0]: https://orbstack.dev
By p0w3n3d 2026-02-2515:58 I got into problems with test containers on podman and I have no idea how to solve them. Have you fought with that by any chance?
By blakesterz 2026-02-2515:51 I'll just add another vote for OrbStack. I found it way faster on M1 and M5 and never found any compatibility issues.
By mrbluecoat 2026-02-2514:561 reply I also like that Rancher Desktop supports nerdctl. Colima is another similar project.
I imagine that OrbStack has containerd buried inside somewhere and could support ctr and (awkwardly) nerdctl, but if so it’s pretty well hidden.
By chuckadams 2026-02-2517:201 reply I build containers for multiple platforms using orbstack, and that requires the containerd backend. So yes, it's in there somewhere.
Huh. Are you actually talking to containerd directly or are you just doing something via the docker frontend that requires containerd to function?
By chuckadams 2026-02-2521:05 Presumably it's talking to the docker daemon which itself farms some piece out to containerd? I'm really not sure how the integration works.
By pm90 2026-02-2515:12 I love podman. it’s my default whenever i need to run containers locally. Ive also used it to run containerized systemd services.
Selling enterprise licenses is a smart move from Redhat: they actually build/contribute to production grade container orchestration platforms like openshift. Unlike Docker Inc which looks like it only has the docker registry and Docker Desktop.
