[alexandros]

Hey there - BalenaOS is built to run containerised workloads on small devices and is quite stripped down otherwise, kinda like coreOS. So in that sense our architecture allows you to have less stuff you don't need floating around, saving you overhead. We focused on Docker containers since balenaCloud is built for fleets. It's important that our stack supports not just one but many copies of the same device running the same code, and then it can be updated in production etc, just like a set of servers. If one is optimizing for a single device, just naked Raspbian will do fine of course. Our approach has a bit of overhead up front in terms of setup, but you get a production ready setup from day one in return.