I'd say the biggest difference is in the backend -- canine is built on top of kubernetes, which is what lets it leverage the rich ecosystem of tooling and packages. Kubernetes has a reputation for being difficult to use, and so Canine tries to be super opinionated, and follow a set of best practices.

I'd like to think at this point (about 2 years into development) we've gotten to a place where the end user doesn't even know they are using Kubernetes.