K3s + MicroK8s – Lightweight Kubernetes That Actually Fits on the Edge K3s – Tiny but Real Kubernetes K3s is a minimalist Kubernetes distribution, designed for low-resource environments like edge nodes, ARM boards (think Raspberry Pi), and IoT gateways. It’s packaged as a single binary, strips out a lot of the heavy components (no etcd by default, uses SQLite), and just runs — even on tiny boxes.

It’s CNCF-certified, supports Helm, Traefik, containerd, and can work in HA clusters. The goal isn’

WSL 2 + Docker – Real Linux Containers on Windows Without the Overhead WSL 2: Linux That Lives Inside Windows (for Real This Time) Let’s be honest — WSL 1 was clever, but limited. It felt like Linux, but under the hood, it just translated system calls.
WSL 2 changed that.

Now there’s a real Linux kernel running inside a lightweight VM, and it behaves like the real thing — because it is the real thing. Systemd? Works. SSH server? Sure. Bash scripts, Python tools, rsync, even package managers — n

Podman – Containers Without the Daemon, and Without the Fuss What Is Podman Podman is a container engine that looks and feels a lot like Docker — same commands, same behavior — but with one major twist: no central daemon.
It’s daemonless, rootless by design, and better aligned with how Unix systems typically manage processes.

Instead of relying on a long-running service like ‘dockerd’, Podman uses standard Linux process models. That means each container runs as a direct child of the launching p

VirtualBox – Virtual Machines That Just Work, No Cloud Required What Is VirtualBox VirtualBox is the kind of tool that’s been around long enough to become a default. It runs on almost anything — Windows, Linux, macOS, even Solaris — and can host nearly any OS you throw at it, from modern Linux distros to Windows 98 or FreeBSD.

But it’s not just about legacy support. What makes it stick around is simplicity. You download it, install it, and within a few clicks, you’re running a VM. No licensing