I'm quite interested in seeing where slim VM's go. Personally I don't use Kubernetes, it just doesn't fit my client work which is nearly all single-server and it makes more sense to just run podman systemd units or docker-compose setups.

So from that perspective, when I've peeked at firecracker, kata containers, etc, the "small dev dx" isn't quite there yet, or maybe never will get there since the players target other spaces (aws, fly.io, etc). Stuff like a way to share volumes isn't supported, etc. Personally I find Dockers architecture a bit distasteful and Podmans tooling isn't quite there yet (but very close).

Honestly I don't really care about containers vs VMs except the VM alleges better security which is nice, and I guess I like poking at things but they're were a little too rough for weekend poking.

Is anyone doing "small scale" lightweight vm deployments - maybe just in your homelab or toy projects? Have you found the experience better than containers?

This is pretty much me and my homelab. I haven't visited it in a while, but Weave Ignite might be of interest here. https://github.com/weaveworks/ignite