Keep in mind that this post is by a company that offers one of the options they compare. So there is an obvious conflict of interest, and I wouldn’t trust the conclusions that were reached
And obviously their option is the “best”. From the conclusion:
Talos Linux is unique. It’s the only option that includes OS management in a purpose-built distribution for running Kubernetes. There’s no compromise for scaling up or down. In terms of small-scale numbers, it “wins” in several of the examined categories, including memory usage, disk r/w, and installation size. But all of these metrics are side effects of Talos Linux’s defining characteristic: It’s simple.
You could try mine, SimpleK8s (kubeadm, containerd, systemd, buildroot), ~50Mb single file (kernel+initramfs). https://simplek8s.org/
The current footprint is lower than every alternatives commented on this article.
