It's very different from k3s. With k3s, you have a Linux installation like Debian or Fedora and you install k3s on it. You can SSH into the box, install any other Linux program not running in Kubernetes, etc. It also means that you need to run security updates and all the other stuff that goes along with administering a Linux box.

With Talos, it's just Kubernetes running on the box. There's no SSH or anything. Yes, it's a Linux kernel running, but you don't have a way of running stuff on the box outside of Kubernetes.

For me, Talos is great. If I'm setting up some boxes for K8s, I don't want to have to deal with admin'ing a Linux box. I don't want to login to the box and run some non-K8s service on it. I just want a K8s node and that's what Talos gives me. I think that's also the experience most people want. It's why people pay AWS, GCS, and Azure tons of money to get hosted K8s nodes rather than a Linux box they need to admin.