I completely agree that most people don't need that. This is always what people say when k8s comes up. This is also what people said about git 15 years ago (you're not the kernel etc). But the thing is you don't have to use any of the bits you don't need. At first I listened to the naysayers and was wary of k8s thinking it would create more problems than it solves. That simply hasn't been the case. It's not a no-brainer, there are tradeoffs, but I really think it makes sense especially if you're doing docker anyway. Like I said in another comment, people tend to talk about two different things. There's k8s which can be as little as just a single node k3s server which is basically docker compose with a few extras like automatic rollout etc. Then there's the over the top "cloud native" stuff. One does not imply the other.