Kubernetes is a robot made of cats. Not robotic cats like Voltron. Actual, you know. Cats.

You can learn the basics in a week. It will take a very very long time to learn to be comfortable in it.

Kubernetes The Hard Way is the usual answer to "how do I learn this?"

This is unfortunately and hilariously accurate.

It’s a great system in a lot of ways, but it sure has lots of quirks.

> in a way that you can primarily use a GUI

Rancher filled this role for me. Would recommend.

https://rancher.com/

https://github.com/rancher/rancher#rancher

Seconded. I used Rancher 1.x which used their own framework called Cattle. Since Kubernetes took off they moved exclusively to k8s. It's a great product.

https://infra.app/ is a great way to view, understand and troubleshoot apps on Kubernetes

The distros are provided by different vendors in the market (Red Hat, Pivotal, Rancher, others). It's a way for them to bundle in additional features while staying compliant with the standard Kubernetes APIs

I made a few YouTube videos showing how I get Rancher and a K8s cluster running in the DigitalOcean Managed Kubernetes offering (DOKS)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcdHMZkfm5ujt60AwNh1E...

Also available in text but it’s not as detailed as the videos, basically my cheat sheets published:

https://avencera.com/learn

"Kubernetes in action" is a very good book. The first half can get you a pretty good hands-on understanding in 1-2 days.

There's a CLI named k9s[0] but it works like a GUI. It's pretty slick IMO.

[0]: https://github.com/derailed/k9s

Udemy has good Kubernetes training. If you're hoping for an easy-to-use one-click GUI - good luck. vSphere 7 is finally integrating containers into their platform but even that is a mess to get up and running at this point.

There are so many distributions because it's COMPLICATED. Everyone is approaching it from a different angle trying to make it consumable by the enterprise.

If you look for the kubernetes code labs on google cloud, they’ll get you deploying stuff to kubernetes in a few minutes.

Simple way to learn is to load up an AKS cluster (free for the master, simple to follow tutorials online), then learn to create a deployment and link a service to it (just a yaml file). It's really only an extra step or two on running a docker container.

Here are some resources I collected over the time

References:

https://chrisshort.net/kubernetes-illustrated-childrens-guid...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10NltoF_6y3mBwUzQ4bcQ... (The Kubernetes Learning Resources List)

https://github.com/jamiehannaford/what-happens-when-k8s

https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes

https://github.com/nkuba/k8s-admin-helper

https://github.com/ramitsurana/awesome-kubernetes

https://github.com/topics/cka?o=desc&s=stars

https://github.com/topics/kubernetes?o=desc&s=stars

https://k3s.io

https://kind.sigs.k8s.io

https://kubernauts-slack-join.herokuapp.com

https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts

https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubectl/cheatsheet

https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks

https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/manage-kubernetes-objects/i...

https://kubernetes.io/training

https://kubernetesbyexample.com

https://labs.play-with-k8s.com

https://medium.com/faun/be-fast-with-kubectl-1-18-ckad-cka-3...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22597880 (Kind - run local Kubernetes clusters using Docker (k8s.io))

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22689119 (Anyone have a recommended guide for Kubernetes?)

https://rancher.com

https://slack.k8s.io

https://techbeacon.com/enterprise-it/47-advanced-tutorials-m...

https://www.facebook.com/groups/kubernetes.users

https://www.facebook.com/kubernetesio

https://youtu.be/0Omvgd7Hg1I (Life of a Packet [I] - Michael Rubin, Google)

https://pinboard.in/u:sharjeelsayed/t:kubernetes

Books and Courses:

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) with Practice Tests by Mumshad Mannambeth

https://kodekloud.com/p/certified-kubernetes-administrator-w...

https://www.udemy.com/course/certified-kubernetes-administra...

https://kodekloud.com/purchase?product_id=1521961&coupon_cod... (Labs - Certified Kubernetes Administrator with Practice Tests)

https://github.com/mmumshad/kubernetes-the-hard-way

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2We04F3Y_41lFKy19ig_... (JSON PATH)

https://kodekloud.com/p/json-path-quiz (JSON PATH Quiz- FREE COURSE)

https://join.slack.com/t/kodekloud/shared_invite/zt-dkvyibo4...

https://www.facebook.com/kodekloudtraining

Kubernetes The Hard Way https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way

https://linuxacademy.com/course/kubernetes-the-hard-way

https://napo.io/posts/kubernetes-the-real-hard-way-on-aws

https://github.com/mmumshad/kubernetes-the-hard-way

Kubernetes: Up and Running: Dive into the Future of Infrastructure 2nd Edition

https://www.amazon.com/Kubernetes-Running-Dive-Future-Infras...

https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/kubernetes-up-and/...

More at http://Learn.SharjeelSayed.com

If you think k8s is too complex for you, you don't need it.

Not to sound cocky, but there are probably below 1000 companies on earth that need it.

GKE on Google Cloud has a robust interface and is very usable in my experience.