Plain old systemd unit files work great. If you really need containers for some reason and love UID and GID mapping then podman in systemd is great.

The only reason I’ve found to run k8s at home is if your full time job is operating k8s at work.

I mostly use docker compose. Perfect fit for tinkering but not over complicated and huge ram eater.

Also:k3s might be an option.

Compose is great for home use.

If you run your home server on a separate box, like a RaspPi or NUC, docker-machine via SSH can make provisioning and updating a tad easier.

I've plugged it before, but Portainer (portainer.io) is what finally got me into running containers for apps. It presents a really nice interface for running individual containers or stacks including docker-compose files, and it extends the nerd knobs for doing things like custom networking or filesystem mounts. I paired it with Ouroboros for doing automated container upgrades in the background, and the result is that I have a solid set of container apps running at all times that I never have to touch.

Were I learning k8s for work, it wouldn't be a good solution, but for simple home apps that you want to fire and forget, it definitely beats doing a hand-made installation and periodically care-and-feeding them.

I've used Nomad by HashiCorp and it's been really nice to use. Though I haven't needed to scale it up a ton so I can't comment on that, but the day-to-day deploying of updated apps is nice and works well.

docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped