Red Hat build of Podman Desktop Life Cycle

Overview

Red Hat provides a published product life cycle for the Red Hat build of Podman Desktop, in order for customers and partners to effectively plan their deployments. The major and minor releases of Red Hat build of Podman Desktop follow a life cycle with two distinct stages: the Full Support Phase and the Maintenance Support Phase. Red Hat aims to forecast releases at a 3 month cadence, providing customers ample opportunity to plan. Each release will be supported for a total of about six months by combining the Full and Maintenance Support cycles. During these phases (see details below) of the life cycle, software covered by an active subscription receives support according to Red Hat's Base Support Terms of Service and Scope of Coverage.

Full Support Phase

This phase begins with the GA of a minor version and ends with the superseding minor release; a time period of about three months.

During the Full Support Phase, qualified Critical and Important Security Advisories (RHSAs) and Urgent and Selected High Priority Bug Fix Advisories (RHBAs) will be released as they become available; all other available fix and qualified patches may be released via periodic updates. In order to receive security and bug fixes, customers are expected to upgrade Red Hat build of Podman Desktop to the most current supported micro (1.y.z) version.

Maintenance Support Phase

This phase commences at the end of the Full Support phase and ends when the 3rd superseding minor version is released; a time period of about three months.

During the Maintenance Support phase, qualified Critical and Important Security Advisories (RHSAs) and Urgent and Selected High Priority Bug Fix Advisories (RHBAs) will be released as they become available. Other Bug Fix (and Enhancement (RHEA) Advisories may be released at Red Hat’s discretion, but should not be expected.

At the end of the maintenance support phase, the respective release for Red Hat build of Podman Desktop will be considered End of Life. Red Hat will make commercially reasonable efforts for software and documentation to remain available to customers for a given major (eg. v1) release; however no technical support will be provided. Full functionality for Red Hat build of Podman Desktop may require access to hosted services provided by Red Hat, the availability of these services cannot be guaranteed for unmaintained and unsupported versions of the product.

Life Cycle Dates

Platform Availability and Support

Red Hat build of Podman Desktop is designed to provide a consistent container management experience across the most common developer environments. To ensure optimal performance and compatibility with modern hardware, Red Hat supports the product on both traditional x86_64 and ARM64 architectures.

Red Hat validates specific operating system versions and hardware architectures for each release to ensure full functionality of the Podman engine and desktop interface. For detailed platform support information, including supported operating systems and architectures for each version, refer to the Support details section in the Release Notes available at https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_build_of_podman_desktop/latest/

Bundled Extensions

Red Hat build of Podman Desktop includes several bundled extensions to enhance developer workflows. These extension integrations follow the Red Hat build of Podman Desktop Full Support and Maintenance Support phases.

While the extensions are technically supported as part of the product, customers should note:

  • Lifecycle Alignment: Support for a bundled extension ends simultaneously with the Maintenance Support Phase of the associated Podman Desktop version.
  • Component Churn: Extensions may include underlying technologies that follow their own independent maintenance schedules. Red Hat may update the version of a bundled component within a Podman Desktop minor release to ensure security compliance or compatibility.
  • Custom Extensions: Support for the life cycle and compatibility of non-bundled, third-party, or custom-loaded extensions is outside the scope of this document.

Support for bundled extensions is provided as part of the Red Hat build of Podman Desktop subscription. Further information on how extensions are supported is available on the Red Hat build of Podman Desktop Support Scope Page.