I use k3s and enjoy benefits like the following over bare metal:

• Configuration as code where my whole setup is version controlled in git
• Containers and avoiding dependency hell
• Built-in reverse proxy with the Traefik ingress controller. Combined with DNS in my OpenWRT router, all of my self hosted apps can be accessed via appname.lan (e.g., jellyfin.lan, forgejo.lan)
• Declarative network policies with Calico, mainly to make sure nothing phones home
• Managing secrets securely in git with Bitnami Sealed Secrets
• Liveness probes that automatically “turn it off and on again” when something goes wrong

These are just some of the benefits just for one server. Add more and the benefits increase.

Edit:

Sorry, I realize this post is asking why go bare metal, not why k3s and containers are great. 😬

I ran it on a RPi4 years ago, but it didn’t perform well enough. It performs fine on an old laptop, but not so much in a Pi from my experience. Can’t speak to the RPi5, though.

It’s based on yt-dlp, which I can’t seem to get working reliably with my VPN, even with manual intervention like using cookies from a browser, switching servers, etc. Guess VPN IPs hit the rate limits pretty regularly, though I don’t want to risk my real IP getting banned. I’ve seen some people suggest using a VPS, but sounds like a lot of effort. Running something like this on a server and expecting it to reliably download videos in the background isn’t going to work that well from my experience.