In some ways it sort of does though? The worker nodes can be (and increasingly are) a locked down “cattle” appliances, like CoreOS. Yes, it’s running the Linux kernel so you’re absolutely technically correct to claim it’s Linux, but it’s a far cry from a “pet” RHEL/Debian/etc. system.
Your RHEL/Debian/etc hosts can be just as much locked down cattle as your CoreOS (which is also Linux). I find it very interesting to go on about the technicality of correctness when the entirety of kubernetes is dependent upon Linux.
I found many people using it for the sake of sounding articulated, but not even in farms cattles are as disposable as we like to use it to refer to computers, distributions or whatever.
