I tried Talos few month ago. Found it unstable and complicated; reported few bugs.

And because they are "immutable" - I found it's significantly more complicated to use with no tangible benefits. I do not want to learn and deal declarative machine configs, learn how to create custom images with GPU drivers...

Quite a few things which I get done on Ubuntu / Debian under 60 seconds - takes me half an hour to figure out with Talos.

Learning new things takes time.

It sounds like an immutable kubernetes distro doesn't solve any problems for you.

How do you manage node settings k8s does not yet handle with Talos?

Talos has it's own API that you interact with primarily through the talosctl command line. You apply a declarative machineconfig.yaml with which custom settings can be set per-node if you wish.