K3s is easy to deploy. It has a great installer, and it's fully compatible with the entire Kubernetes ecosystem of tooling.

Atomic Object is a software consultancy specializing in custom software development and product design. Readers can learn about software development methodologies, user-centered design principles, and agile practices. With case studies, blog posts, and technical insights, Atomic Object provides  guidance and expertise for building innovative and user-friendly software products.

Atomic Spin

A step-by-step guide to deploying a Dockerized web app on a single Linux server using K3s (lightweight Kubernetes), Helm, Zot (private OCI registry), and CloudNativePG. The guide walks through installing a single-node K3s cluster, setting up a private container registry with Zot, deploying a managed PostgreSQL instance via the CloudNativePG operator, and packaging the app as a Helm chart with automatic database wiring. The full stack runs on 2–4GB RAM and provides a scalable, standards-based alternative to ad-hoc deployment methods like Docker Compose or systemd services.

K3s: A Better Way to Deploy a Docker App to a Linux Server

According to the author, docker compose is an alternative way but “the drawback is either facing a lot of manual steps or writing a lot of tooling yourself” As if k3s and other tools mentioned here manage and recover themselves, and the knowhow automatically given to you by birth…
You only create docker compose, once. That’s it. You need to scale? Copy paste the compose.yml and if your application supports scaling, you scaled your app!
If you think k3s is the solution something, boy oh boy…