To truly master Kubernetes, you need a safe sandbox, and running a lightweight distribution is the perfect solution for your local development workflow. These smaller K8s flavors provide a full-featured, yet constrained, environment that is easy on system resources. Both MicroK8s (maintained by Canonical) and k3s (from Rancher) are popular, production-ready options that deliver the core K8s experience with minimal operational burden, low storage needs, and simple networking setups.

These two platforms are fantastic for learning, experimentation, rapid testing, and skill development. If you don't know which one to choose, this post will give you the quick overview you need to decide.