Talos Linux is a custom Linux operating system created solely for Kubernetes deployments. Because it is singular in it’s objectve, it removes most of the binaries from a conventional Linux system leaving an image which only uses about 100MiB disk space and composed of about 50 binaries on top of the file system.
Talos is also unique in that there isn’t an exposed SSH port but you instead log in and manage the cluster using an API which is cryptographically secured.
Also of note is that Talos is designed Kubernetes-first, meaning that there are
tools such as talosctl which were created with Kubernetes use in mind from the
developers, providing a unified experience.