What benefit does k8s introduce in a home server? I currently have about a dozen services, but only use docker compose and a bit of shell scripting.

I have a single home server (debian on an old mac mini) and this thing is like my router. Power on and just wait. Jellyfin and other stuff are taken care off by apt upgrade. I don’t usually bother upgrading the others unless they fail due to dependency updates (which only happened once).

> Do you run like 1 app on your home server?

I could just as well ask you why you need to be running 10 services at home.

> I'm a professional software engineer.

Good for you, mate.

> Do you think I want to ssh into my server

Clearly you don't, so why even make this a point? No one told you that you have to do it this way.

> What if a service stops, how do you automatically restart it?

It's called systemd, launchd, OpenRC, or any number of various mechanisms used to manage services and restart them.

> How would you automate creation of a qa environment when you create a PR on github so that you can test your changes before they go to prod?

No doubt, containers can be beneficial when deploying services exposed to the public. That doesn't mean a layer of complexity isn't added on top that one could consider "fiddling" when applied to the context of self-hosting.

I really hope you aren't orchestrating a QA environment just for software you run at home, unless that's truly your passion. I assume you were referring to what you do in your day job.

> Gonna ssh into the server and pull down your repo and build the app and run it?

As if all server software can only be installed that way without Docker containers. Even when that is the way, you're speaking like running a few commands is akin to landing astronauts on the Moon.

> It takes like a day to figure out docker compose and like a week to figure out k8s at a level where you can get things done.

Or I can just install the thing I want, make sure it binds to whatever port I need it to, and not need to think about docker-compose.yml.

> Of course I want a declarative deployment for my complex home server.

Then go ahead and do that. No one's stopping you, mate. I prefer to avoid that as much as I can because it's another thing to learn that, in all the years I've used Docker, rarely provided me that much benefit. I have zero interest in understanding the nuances of docker-compose.yml. (and yes, I am very familiar with it)

> It's not "fiddling" if you know how these things actually work.

Whoa, buddy. We already know you're a professional software engineer. No need to be punching down.

> You don't even need Uptime Kuma with docker compose,

You don't even need either of those things.

> instead you just set a container restart policy and have a healthcheck endpoint.

That's cool man. I don't care about any of that. Again, from my perspective, those are things I consider a waste of time for self-hosting. Especially the health check thing. More power to you if that's your style, but I have other priorities in life, and I'm not wrong for considering all these added technologies to result in more fiddling.