Edge locations are often unstaffed, or staffed by technicians, and edge processing requires low maintenance solutions as a result of this. The industry is shifting in favor of a new generation of edge and IoT devices which are now generally capable of running standard versions of Linux.
The growth of edge processing has encouraged a market in software designed specifically for edge deployments. For example, all of the major Linux vendors have a version of their distributions specifically designed for either edge or IoT deployments; these are much smaller than the distributions that typically run in traditional data centers, yet similar enough to basically be considered one and the same.
A similar situation is developing for running containers at the edge. Since edge computing is almost by definition a cloud-native environment, it's now become common to see scaled-down versions of Kubernetes being deployed at edge locations, such as servers located in retail outlets, branch offices or in manufacturing facilities, as well as in unmanned edge facilities that might be processing data from cell phone apps or surveillance cameras.