I’m new to the container world. Does it have any security benefits when I run my applications as a non-root user in a docker container? And how about Podman? There I’ll run the container as an unprivileged user anyway. Would changing the user in the container achieve anything?
Container are not a security concept. Hence, running things inside of a container does not provide any security benefits as opposed to outside of the container.
In actual fact, if you take the time to configure you services with proper systemd security features, you get more secure environments than with running generic containers with “just” unprivileged users.
Not really true, containers are based on namespaces which have always been also a security feature. Chroot has been a common “system” technique, afterall.
Containers help security if built properly, and it’s easier to build a container securely (and run them), compared to proper SystemD unit security.