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@iamgoncaloalves.bsky.social

k3s is great once you're past the curve. For folks still learning Docker Compose, I built a guide that covers the fundamentals step by step — solid prep before the k8s jump: https://pebbleware.gumroad.com/l/self-hosting-starter-guide

Goncalo Alves

k3s is great until you realize half your homelab stuff has a perfectly fine compose file and learning helm configs at midnight isn't what you signed up for. i'd say compose first, add k3s when you genuinely need it. homelab shouldn't feel like a second job

Yeah, if I was writing helm by hand I would agree. Claude is great at writing them or converting from compose, so it hasn't felt like a chore for me yet.

For one, I actually really like managing the infra and containers with terraform. It would be annoying to write everything by hand... But that's what claude is for. Using tf with k3s is very nice, especially compared to what it would look like with docker

Secondly, the way traefik works for controlling ingress with annotations on containers is really convenient. It puts the configuration in the right place... Close to the app, not the proxy. Not specific to k3s, but it's the default setup and it makes sense

Third, k3s setup is easy. I avoided kuberenetes for a long time for my own server because I thought it would be a pain to set up. Using k3s makes it easy. The only trouble I had at all was figuring out how to get it working with IPv6-only setups.