Yes, it's definitely worth persisting, especially if you use K8s. Podman can import/export Pod objects with the same API as K8s, so it makes it trivial to run the same k8s yaml locally and in a deployed environment.
Running a light weight Kubernetes setup like k3s locally is a better solution for that use case, imo.
k3s is something I've heard about but know very little. Does it use a VM? I tried skimming their website but couldn't parse that out.
No VM, it is just a light weight distribution of Kubernetes that can be effortlessly installed and run on Linux.
I personally feel that any pain you might face with podman is worth it just for the ability to treat container applications just like any other application on your system