Podman is what Docker should have been, for me. Security first, no daemon, more Linux-like behavior (You can manage them with SystemD unit files if you wish) and it supports the same, usual container images you build/use with Docker.
The main part it was lacking is the compose equivalent, but that too is coming along.
(It's fun to note how systemd was an epitome of in-Linux-like software 7-8 years ago, and now it's the opposite. I'm not talking about systemd merits here, just about the change in perception.)
Comparably little harsh criticism has been made for systemd the init system, most has concerned systemd-the-almost-ntp-client and systemd-the-binary-logfile, the various related xml documents, things like that.
Honestly with quadlet it might be there on the compose front: being able to deploy either as systemd-like files or as Kubernetes manifests probably solves the entire problem in a very nice way (the K8S compatibility is the real magic IMO since it's the defacto cloud ecosystem).
I haven't played with any of Podman's Kubernetes YAML stuff yet, but we target Kubernetes.
Does it support higher-level declarations like Deployments and StatefulSets? I'm trying to understand how/if we could use this without having to write new manifests. A (very) quick search didn't clarify it for me.
Quadlets just create a systemd unit file to launch containers with podman and have systemd manage its lifetime. Since systemd lacks the ability of controllers like Deployment and StatefulSets, I doubt that quadlets are able to achieve much more.
I'm pretty sure, that cleverly combining various unit types and their capabilities/attributes would allow to cover 90% of what's needed to emulate Deployments and StatefulSets.
Podman is what Docker should have been, for me. Security first, no daemon, more Linux-like behavior (You can manage them with SystemD unit files if you wish) and it supports the same, usual container images you build/use with Docker.
The main part it was lacking is the compose equivalent, but that too is coming along.