I haven't worked in k8s, but really what is being argued is that it is a cross cloud standardization API, largely because the buzzword became big enough that the cloud providers conformed to it rather than keep their API moat.

However all clouds will want API moats.

It is also true that k8s appears too complex for the low end, and there is a strong lack of a cross cloud standardization (maybe docker but that is too low) for that use case.

K8s is bad at databases. So k8s is incomplete as well. It also seems to lack good UIs, but that impression/claim may be only lack of exposure.

What is blindingly true to me is that the building blocks at a cli level for running and manipulating processes/programs/servers in a data center, what was once kind of called a "dc os" is really lacking.

Remote command exec needs ugly ssh wrapping assuming the network boundaries are free enough (k8s requires an open network between all servers iirc), and of course ssh is under attack by teleport and other enterprise fiefdom builders.

Docker was a great start. Parallel ssh is a crude tool.

I've tried multiple times to make a swarm admin tool that was cross cloud and cross framework and cross command and stdin srrout stderr transport agnostic. It's hard.