I think that the most important thing Kubernetes does is vocabulary. You can replace docker build with podman or kaniko, but Dockerfile is a standard. You’ll no

I think that the most important thing Kubernetes does is vocabulary. You can replace docker build with podman or kaniko, but Dockerfile is a standard. You’ll not rewrite them. You can use k3s, gke. May be there’ll be independent implementations. But your infra code will be the same. It liberates you from dependency on particular cloud or even technology. And it enables easier distribution of software. Layer one is source code. You need to build it. Layer two is OCI image. Smart people, often original developers did the build and Linux dependency management, and you just need some runtime to run it. But you still need to manage external service dependencies, which ports to expose, which HTTP paths to expose. K8s yamls with some generator like Helm or Kustomize complete that picture, so you can deploy some service along its dependencies with one command. Docker-compose could be a better alternative. I like it more. But it’s not feature-complete (e.g. no ingresses, security is a complete afterthought) and at this point will not be a viable competitor.