But for a richer Kubernetes environment, you might want to look at CRI-O https://cri-o.io/ and it's GitHub repo (https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o). Others more involved than I with the Kubernetes side of things will likely have more insight.

The built-in Docker support in Kubernetes (the so called "dockershim") is getting deprecated - in favor of the standard interfaces such as CRI (for runtime) and CNI (for network): https://kubernetes.io/blog/2016/12/container-runtime-interface-cri-in-kubern... https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements/blob/master/keps/sig-node/1985-re... So there it will be between "containerd" (supported by docker/moby for some features) and "cri-o" (supported by podman for some features), as two available choices for the CRI: * https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/production-environment/container-runtimes/#... * https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/production-environment/container-runtimes/#... Both are available out-of-the-box in minikube, by using the --container-runtime start parameter: --container-runtime string The container runtime to be used (docker, cri-o, containerd). You can also connect directly to them, but there is nothing in Kubernetes itself that requires this... (it is a minikube feature, with the docker-env and podman-env commands, to set the environment) The plan is to make docker a socket-activated supporting service for containerd (not a default daemon), and to make podman a socket-activated supporting service for cri-o (same)... * https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/issues/9230 * https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/issues/9232 We mostly use docker/podman when it comes to doing a "load" from an archive in the cache, or doing a "build" from a Dockerfile/Containerfile to an image. The rest is done by crictl. /Anders PS. Currently minikube still use the legacy docker-2376 and podman-varlink protocols though. But eventually both of them will be replaced, by using the unix sockets over a ssh connection...