Installing Podman with Podman Desktop

On Windows and macOS, running the Podman container engine requires running a Linux distribution on a virtual machine. Podman Desktop can assist you to install the Podman container engine in a Fedora distribution of Linux, on a virtual machine.

Main benefits are:

• Ease of use.
• On Windows: Windows Subsystem for Linux version 2 (WSL 2) native virtualization performance.

Consider rather installing Podman with OpenShift Local if your environment doesn't allow you to meet the prerequisites.

Prerequisites

• Podman is not installed.
• 6 GB RAM.
• The host runs Windows or macOS.
• Windows prerequisites:
  • WSL prerequisites:
    • User with administrator privileges.
    • Windows 64bit.
    • Windows 10 Build 19043 or greater, or Windows 11.
    • On a virtual machine: Nested Virtualization enabled.
  • No WSL 2 Linux virtual machine is running.

Procedure

1. (On Windows) Enable the WSL feature without installing the default Ubuntu distribution of Linux. See Enabling WSL 2 and WSL basic commands:

   wsl --install --no-distribution

2. The Home screen displays Podman Desktop was not able to find an installation of Podman. Click Install.

3. Podman Desktop checks the prerequisites to install Podman. When necessary, follow the instructions to install prerequisites.

4. Podman displays the dialog: Podman is not installed on this system, would you like to install Podman?. Click Yes to install Podman, and follow the installation program instructions.

5. Click Initialize Podman.

Additional resources

• Understanding WSL 2.

Next steps

• Getting Started with Podman Desktop