I mean, Kubernetes is just some Go binaries; you can have it up and running in literal seconds by installing a Kubernetes distribution like k3s. This is actually what I do personally on a dedicated server; it’s so easy I don’t even bother automating it further. Helm is just another Go binary, you can install it on your machine with cURL and it can connect to your cluster and do what it needs from there. The Docker registry can be run inside your cluster, so you can install it with Helm, and it will benefit from all of the Infra as Code that you get from Kubernetes. And finally, the Helm repo is “just files” but it is less complex than Apt.

I’ve been through the rigmarole for various Linux package managers over the years and I’m sure you could automate a great deal of it, but even if it were as easy as running a bash script (and it’s not,) setting up Kubernetes covers like half this list whereas setting up an Apt repo covers one item in it.