I know this isn't the answer you want, but consider switching away from compose
entirely
A local kubernetes instance handles all the routing for me, and since i was using that anyway podman was legitimately a drop in replacement for docker.
Podman is just the tool that creates the container for me, running it gets handled by something else entirely.
Also, i can run podman compose up
just fine, no hyphen needed. https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-compose.1.html
garuda is one I’ve been playing with recently, and have been very pleased with
It’s built on arch, so not the most beginner friendly base, but they add all my favorite tweaks into the base install. Including fish as the default shell which is more beginner friendly imo
And it’s built and optimized for gaming and comes with all the needed software and drivers pre installed, so even less tinkering required to get it working.