I have tried several times over the past few years to install Kubernetes on bare metal, and it has never worked.

I don't mean installing it on VMs on a laptop, I mean on a real linux cluster of 8 to 32 nodes, with real networks and real switches.

Managing bare metal machines is a cakewalk compared to getting Kubernetes running in-house, at least in my experience.

Obviously the cloud providers do it, so it's possible. But IMO it is something you do only if you have a full-time admin team available to set it up and manage it. It's not by any stretch of the imagination something you install and forget about.