RKE2 has a bit more of a security-focus and as such some of the default configuration settings are changed. However, these are all distributions and not forks, we simply package upstream k8s in a specific way. For example, RKE1 packages all the k8s components as Docker containers, RKE2 runs as a single binary and uses containerd

To a developer/end application, interacting with a RKE/RKE2/K3S cluster is the same as a EKS, AKS, GKE cluster, or any from https://landscape.cncf.io/card-mode?category=certified-kubernetes-distribution&grouping=category