Podman on SLES 16: Installation, Storage, and First Rootless Container (2026 Guide)

Podman on SLES 16: Installation, Storage, and First Rootless Container (2026 Guide) Quick one-liner: Install Podman on SLES 16 from the installation DVD, set up shared multi-user storage on a dedicated disk, and run your first rootless container — no Docker required. (This guide targets SLES 16. The concepts apply to SLES 15 as well, but I've only verified the steps on SLES 16.) Why This Matters Docker isn't the only container runtime. On SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, SLES ships Podman as the native container tool through its official Containers module — and it has genuine advantages over Docker. The biggest one: rootless by default. With Docker, the daemon runs as root. That means a container escape could give an attacker root access to your host. Podman runs containers under your regular user account — no root daemon, no single point of failure. There's also no daemon at all. Podman is daemonless — each container runs as a direct child process. Simpler, more secure, easier to debug.