That could well be another factor–but I expect iX’ habit of making drastic breaking changes (this isn’t the first time, and I’m sure it won’t be the last) is weightier to them at this point, such that they’re quite motivated to come up with a solution that depends as little as possible on anything under iX’ control. I know I would be, were I in their shoes.
Because at this point, what assurance do they (or you, or I) have that sandboxes are going to stick around? iX are growing, IMO[1], less and less trustworthy[2]. We have no idea if, much less when, sandboxes are going to be a first-class feature, nor how many changes they’ll go through along the way. We don’t even have any real assurance that they aren’t going to just go away. So while I know iX’ official recommendation is to install k3s in a sandbox, I don’t know that I’d choose that solution if I wanted a platform that was going to be stable over time.
Why wouldn’t they? There’s certainly been plenty of buzz about them in Dragonfish (in no small part thanks to you), and there was plenty of discussion, even though completely unsupported, about using them in Bluefin and Cobia as well. I’ll leave discussion of the technical pros and cons to others more familiar with them.
I don’t know what their plans are in any detail other than that they mentioned something VM-based. Given that they were blind-sided by this news just like the rest of us, they may change their mind about that, but that’s what I’m understanding at this point. They’re planning to have a beta out 1 July, so we’ll know more then.