You can start with minikube, it’s a one node environment you can run in a vm. Another fairly straightforward kubernetes distribution is k3s, you can set it up on a bunch of nodes running common linux distributions via ansible for example.

I learned how to kubernetes from open online sources and just trying really hard to set up certain apps. Some have kubernetes tutorials or deployment manifests included.

You can also start with helm, which is like a package manager for kubernetes. It can ease you into configuration required for each application.

As for docker, kubernetes uses containers, but those are bundled into pods. It’s not a particularly difficult leap I think. However I recommend trying using podman for a bit first. It’s fairly compatible with dockerfiles and commands, but also allows you to setup and export pods you can then directly use in kubernetes.

You can get started pretty easily with Podman desktop and kind. Then you have a small self-contained cluster to mess around with, that also functions as a dev environment. Another option, and how I first learned, was with free credits from GCP. I realize this is self-hosted, just providing options for learning…

I’ve always liked Digital Ocean tutorials for getting stuff done. This one shows you how to deploy some things and links out to official documentation for further details: https://k8s-ops.net/posts/getting-started-with-kubernetes-digitalocean/

These are also good free tutorials: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/devops/kubernetes-tutorial/

Once you are comfortable with kubectl and basic deployments, then look into helm.

Kubernetes has a hell of a learning curve. Once you get your head around it, it can be great but it is a huge lift to learn. For self hosting I’d lean towards docker-compose rather than kubernetes but kubernetes can be nice once you get past the super steep learning curve.

To answer your questions:

1. Any Linux flavor will do the job.
2. No, windows doesn’t really play nice with containers to begin with. Kubernetes is another layer of complexity that will make it tough.
3. Yep, definitely! This is typically done using helm charts. Helm is basically the package manager for kubernetes. There are many helm charts that you can just install into kubernetes and they’ll work for you. You can also roll your own if you have custom applications. Argocd can also be helpful depending on how deep you want to get.
4. I’d start by looking into videos on helm charts. That said, you will need a very strong understanding of docker containers and may need a good understanding of networking.

I would strongly recommend looking into deployment using docker-compose over kubernetes until you understand containers inside and out. While Kubernetes can be nice it akso adds another layer of difficulty. I say this as someone who uses kubernetes daily for work, uses off the shelf helm charts, and writes their own helm charts from scratch.

I can teach you. I have a three node homelab with proxmox and Talos running some basic services. I use fluxcd to deploy. See gitlab.com/devopscoop/talos-template and https://gitlab.com/devopscoop/fluxcd-template. If you want to to get on a call and screenshare, let me know.