alt Hacker Newsk8s doesn't really weigh you down, especially if tuned for the low end use case (k1s). It encourages some dumb decisions that do, such as using Prometheus stack with default settings, but by itself it just eats a lot of ram.
Now using CPU limits in k8s with cgroups v1 does hurt performance. But doing that would hurt performance without k8s too.
> k8s doesn't really weigh you down, especially if tuned for the low end use case (k1s).
Sorry, what "k1s" are you referring to? The only projects with that name that I see are either cut-down management CLIs and GUIs that only work with a preexisting Kubernetes cluster, or years-old abandoned proof-of-concept/alpha-grade Kubernetes reimplementations that are completely unsuitable as a Kubernetes replacement.
The only actually-functional cut-down Kubernetes I'm aware of is 'minikube'. Minikube requires -at minimum- 2 CPUs, 2GB of RAM and 20GB of disk space. [0] That doesn't fit on either of the machines 'nrdvana' was talking about... not the "tiny ... digital ocean droplet", with its 1CPU, 1GB of RAM, and 25GB of disk space [1], nor the "tiny linode" (which has roughly the same specs [2]).
Given that it's not at all uncommon for discarded laptops to have 4 CPUs, 8GB of RAM, and like 250GB of disk, eating 1/4th of the RAM, (intermittently) half of the CPU power, and roughly a tenth of the disk space just for Kubernetes housekeeping kinda sucks. That's pretty damn "heavy", in my judgment. So. Do you have a link to this 'k1s' thing you were talking about? Does it use less than 2 CPUs, 2GB of RAM, and 20GB of disk?
[0] <https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/start/>
[1] <https://www.digitalocean.com/products/droplets#see-what-you-...>
[2] <https://www.akamai.com/cloud/pricing#title-7ba40063be> [3]
[3] Did you know that Linode got bought by Akami? I didn't!