NB: I'm one of the founders of the Kubernetes project

I'd recommend anyone trying to install Kubernetes check out: https://get.k8s.io/

Or the single node Docker based instructions:

https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/docs/ge...

Or boot2k8s: https://github.com/skippbox/boot2k8s

Or kubernetes on OS X: https://github.com/rimusz/coreos-osx-gui-kubernetes-cluster

Or of course the "as a service" versions like Google Container Engine, CoreOS Tectonic, etc.

We're definitely also working on simplifying the install instructions.

I'd also like to expand a little on some of the features that differentiate Swarm from Kuberentes, namely:

   * Secrets
   * Replicated sets of containers
   * Rolling update from one version of code to the next
   * AutoScaling (Kubernetes 1.1, in Release Candidate now)
   * HTTP load balancing for autoscaling  
   * Load balancing for sets of objects (e.g. Frontend)
   * Service discovery of those replicated sets (Swarm has discovery for individual containers, but no concept of Service)

In general, our goal is to build a system that makes distributed system construction easier.

I would also refer people to the discussion in https://github.com/docker/compose/issues/1899#issuecomment-1... as well as https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/8859 on why we feel that the Node-based Docker API is problematic for a cluster level API.