Why Use Podman? Read The Container Commandos Coloring Book and Raise Container Management Masters from Childhood

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 14:00:00 +0800

What children’s books do you recommend? Is it JavaScript for Kids? No! Look at this The Container Commandos coloring book. You should have children learn Podman containerized management from an early age.

This is another masterpiece RedHat released after launching the SELinux Coloring Book. It was drawn by company colleague Máirín Duffy. It advertises products RedHat itself is pushing hard.

Excerpted content:

To protect Earth, containers must be summoned to form a shield and deploy defenses! But the containers cannot connect… a single point of failure has occurred!

What if we… could make containers operate independently from one another?

At this point you know what to do. Summon the following superheroes: Podman (ability: daemonless container management), Buildah (ability: build container images), Skopeo (ability: transport containers), CRI-O (deploy containers to production environments), and OpenShift (ability: control all containers). This dog reminds me of: Woof woof, Podman saves the day!

As a strong promoter of Podman, this book can be downloaded from the Fedora or RedHat website: The Container Commandos Coloring Book

…Although RedHat keeps advertising how easy Podman is to use, because of Portainer and the surrounding ecosystem, I still use Docker more.

I think this book is poorly done! Who is this kind of children’s coloring book even for? You should spend money to hire an artist with a Japanese anime-style look, draw the Podman stuff into an R18 doujinshi, and I guarantee it will blow up the Linux meme scene. Then more nerds will come use Podman.

Install Ubuntu on Android: emulate an x86_64 Linux virtual machine with QEMU in Termux

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 01:00:00 +0800

Introducing how to install a complete Linux system virtual machine on an Android phone/tablet without root.

Termux can use QEMU to emulate and run Linux virtual machines, making up for the shortcomings of the proot-distro environment.

Why use QEMU? The Linux environment provided by proot-distro is similar to chroot, but there are still some packages that cannot run, such as Podman, Docker, Snap, Flatpak, and programs that depend on Systemd, so a virtual machine becomes necessary.

QEMU lets you emulate virtual machines with x86 or ARM architectures and run a complete Linux desktop system. The image below shows Xubuntu running on an Android phone.

This way, almost all software can run. The image shows Podman execution results.

Incidentally, QEMU is the emulator used behind Limbo PC Emulator. After Limbo stopped updating, you can still run virtual machines with Termux’s QEMU package.

Please note: Most Android phones do not have a KVM kernel module (only Pixel phones can use pKVM to accelerate QEMU after root), so QEMU in Termux cannot use KVM to accelerate virtual machine execution like desktop Linux. Without KVM, QEMU virtual machines run extremely slowly. Programs inside the virtual machine run at less than about one fifth the speed of Termux native packages. Text-only programs are barely acceptable, but the office-work experience is poor, let alone gaming.

Given this execution speed, you can skip the graphical interface and SSH directly into it to run programs.

1. Environment
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Phone: Sony Xperia 5 II
System version: Android 14
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 865
RAM：8GB
Linux virtual machine system: Ubuntu 24.04 x86_64 (Xubuntu)

A phone running QEMU should use a flagship processor and have at least 8GB RAM.

The Linux distribution used is Ubuntu, but GNOME is a bit too heavy, so here I choose the lightweight Xubuntu, which uses the XFCE desktop. If you do not need a graphical interface, Ubuntu Server is also fine. Besides Ubuntu, there is an even lighter option: Alpine Linux, designed for embedded systems, which boots faster. (See: Termux headless Alpine Linux QEMU VM)

Because there is no KVM acceleration, there is not much difference between emulating an x86 or ARM virtual machine.

Tip: you can run QEMU on a Linux computer (faster with KVM), create a qcow2 image with the system already installed, then put it on the phone and boot it, saving system installation time.

2. Install prerequisite packages
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Install a VNC client, such as AVNC
Install Termux
Open Termux and keep it running in the background
Go to the Xubuntu official site, copy the ISO download link, and download it with the wget command

pkg install wget

wget https://ftp.ubuntu-tw.net/mirror/ubuntu-cdimage/xubuntu/releases/24.04/release/xubuntu-24.04-desktop-amd64.iso

Then install QEMU and SSH packages

pkg install qemu-system-x86_64 qemu-utils qemu-common openssh vim ovmf

3. Install the Linux virtual machine
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The installation command is similar to running QEMU on a Linux computer, but slightly modified because Android has no KVM.

Podman on Ivon's Blog

Why Use Podman? Read The Container Commandos Coloring Book and Raise Container Management Masters from Childhood

Install Ubuntu on Android: emulate an x86_64 Linux virtual machine with QEMU in Termux

1. Environment #

2. Install prerequisite packages #

3. Install the Linux virtual machine #

1. Environment
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2. Install prerequisite packages
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3. Install the Linux virtual machine
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