While a Minikube VM is portable across operating systems - it supports not only Linux, but Windows, macOS, and even FreeBSD - Microk8s requires Linux, and only on those distributions that support snaps. One of the first factors is cross-platform portability. Here we’ll discuss a few of the interesting differences, and comparing the benefits of a VM based approach with the benefits of a non-VM approach.
It uses snap packages, an application packaging and isolation technology. While Minikube usually spins up a local virtual machine (VM) for the Kubernetes cluster, MicroK8s doesn’t require a VM. Microk8s is the click-and-run solution for deploying a Kubernetes cluster locally, originally developed by Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu.
This article, the second in a series about local deployment options on Linux, and covers MicroK8s. Authors: Ihor Dvoretskyi, Developer Advocate, Cloud Native Computing Foundation Carmine Rimi
