Integrating Podman Desktop with your own wsl2 distribution
Abstract
Previously, when I was using the Docker Desktop app, the integration between the app itself and the Docker installation within my WSL2 Ubuntu 22.04 distro was seamless. All I had to do was open the options and switch a toggle next to my Linux distribution.
Recently, I had to transition to the Podman Desktop app. Since Podman (similar to Docker) uses its own distribution within WSL to host its containers, I was surprised that the process wasn’t as smooth as it was with Docker Desktop. Before I could use Podman similarly to how I had used Docker, I had to do quite a bit of work to get everything set up.
I hope following my steps will save you some time when setting it up for yourself!