On my Raspberry Pi 3 I'm running Hypriot OS which installs a minimal host OS and then just runs Docker. Thanks to cloud-init (Old version though) you can even pre-configure the boot image with your SSH key etc. which allows you to automate your initial install. https://blog.hypriot.com/downloads/ https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/0.7.9/topics/capabilitie...
BalenaOS is also really good for this: https://www.balena.io/os/