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Which Kubernetes is the Smallest? Examining Talos Linux, K3s, K0s, and More - Sidero Labs
(www.siderolabs.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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I find this comparison unfair becuase k3s is a much more batteries included distro than the others, coming with an ingress controller (traefik) and a few other services not in talos or k0s.
But I do think Talos will end up the lighest overall because Talos is not just a k8s distro, but also a extremely stripped down linux distro. They don’t use systemd to start k8s, they have their own tiny init system.
It should be noted that Sidero Labs is the creator of Talos Linux, which another commenter pointed out.