How to install Podman on Ubuntu

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For those who don’t know, Podman is the drop-in replacement for Docker on the Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora environments. This new container technology improves on Docker by decentralizing the components necessary for container management. Instead of having a single daemon for everything, Podman uses individualized components that are only used when necessary.

Another advantage of Podman is that it can work with pods, in similar fashion to Kubernetes. Thing is, Podman was originally released for the Red Hat side of Linux. Of course, this being Linux, it was only a matter of time before Podman was made available for the Debian side of the dodgeball demarcation line.

I want to walk you through the process of installing Podman on Ubuntu. I’ll demonstrate on Ubuntu Server 18.04 (as it’s not working for 20.04). Ready? Let’s go.

Log in to your Ubuntu Server instance and source the release version with the command:

source /etc/os-release

Next, create a new apt source file with the command:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/podman.list

In that file add the line:

deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/kubic:/libcontainers:/stable/xUbuntu_18.04/ / 

Save and close the file. Download and install the necessary GPG key with the command:

curl -L https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/kubic:/libcontainers:/stable/xUbuntu_${VERSION_ID}/Release.key | sudo apt-key add -

Update apt with the command:

sudo apt-get update

Finally, install Podman with the command:

sudo apt-get install podman -y

When the installation completes, verify the installation with the command:

podman --version

You should see in the output the installed release number.

And that’s all there is to installing Podman on Ubuntu. Hopefully, those responsible for making this available for Ubuntu (and other distributions) will fix the issue with installation on the latest Ubuntu LTS release, so you can enjoy podman on 20.04 and beyond.

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