k3s is not a fork of Kubernetes or a stripped-down imitation — it is a CNCF-certified, fully conformant Kubernetes distribution that happens to ship as a single sub-70MB binary and run the control plane in a few hundred megabytes of RAM. So 'k3s vs k8s' is really a packaging and operations question, not an API question: your manifests and Helm charts run unchanged on both. This post breaks down what k3s actually changes (the kine datastore shim, SQLite instead of etcd by default, bundled batteries like Traefik and ServiceLB, removed legacy in-tree drivers), the real resource and operational differences, high-availability options, where each one wins, and where k3s's conveniences can surprise you.
K3s
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k3s vs k8s: Lightweight Kubernetes or the Full Thing? -
Kubernetes for the Homelab: K3s from Scratch to Production An end-to-end guide to running Kubernetes at home with K3s — single-node and HA setups, ingress, persistent storage with Longhorn, MetalLB, cert-manager with DNS-01, automated upgrades, and a pragmatic path to migrate Docker Compose workloads without overengineering it.
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K3s on Raspberry Pi and Homelab: Lightweight Kubernetes That Actually Works A complete hands-on guide to running K3s on Raspberry Pi hardware and homelab servers — from bare-metal bootstrap to production-grade workloads with ingress, persistent storage, and GitOps deployments.
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GitOps with Flux and ArgoCD: Declarative Deployments Driven by Git A comprehensive guide to GitOps using Flux v2 and ArgoCD — covering the four GitOps principles, repository structure strategies, full setup walkthroughs for both tools, secrets management with SOPS and Sealed Secrets, progressive delivery with Flagger, multi-cluster management, and practical day-to-day workflows.
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Helm Charts: Packaging, Templating, and Managing Kubernetes Applications A comprehensive guide to Helm — the package manager for Kubernetes — covering chart structure, Go templating, building charts from scratch, managing releases in production, chart dependencies, CI/CD integration, and essential community charts for homelabs.
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Kubernetes for the Homelab: K3s Setup, Workloads, and Beyond A thorough guide to running Kubernetes in your homelab using K3s — covering installation, core concepts, workload deployment, ingress with TLS, persistent storage, migrating from Docker Compose, Helm, GitOps, and cluster operations.