No. HassOS is an OS. Hassio is a couple of docker containers.
I must be confused then (I know it happens often).
I thought Hass.io was the SD card image used for PI’s.
Or maybe my explanation wasn’t clear.
I’ll just let someone else explain it.
The Google Drive Backup add-on is awesome and life saving.
So you’ll be running venv then and manually downloading and integrating all the software you wish to use?
I’ll concede the fact. However, when you take the first look at the docs for getting started, Hass.io and HassOS are pretty tightly linked. So the typical entry point is to use HassOS, which typically gets you going faster and with less effort. Hence my spend the extra nickel on a good SD card.
Of course, there are exceptions that prove the rule.
HassOS is the SDCard image for Pi’s. Also HassOS comes in VMDK form to use any number of Virtualization technologies/hypervisors.
Hass.io is the set of 2 docker images that run together (supervisor and home assistant). Hass.io runs on HassOS or any docker host.
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Exactly what I did, can’t recommend this enough.
To confuse things more, hassos is also available for nuc.
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Advice for someone starting from scratch: use docker.
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Nah, that would make things too easy! He wants to ignore experienced users and do things the hard way 
Wants to use Hass.io, but wants to avoid the deathly and plague like conditions of Docker.
Good luck!
I shunned docker for ages, thought it seemed unnecessary. It is, but it also makes many things easy and convenient, and I increased my skill set.
Completely agree. I stuck with Venv and the old, old AIO install for way longer than I should of.
Wow, great community, here. All I wanted was guidance on how best to build my HA system — what add-ons/building blocks to use and in what order — and instead I get a bunch of posts about SD cards and SSDs and now I’m being bashed about Docker (without so much as a “hmmm, that’s odd… what problems have you had with Docker?”) Really helpful, guys. Thanks a lot.
Look, I understand that Hass.io is running in a Docker container and I’m fine with that. As far as I can tell, Hass.io “just works”. But the last time I tried to setup HA - specifically NOT using Hass.io but rather using HA IN A DOCKER CONTAINER and setting up Mosquitto, Portainer, Node-RED, and a few other components - ALL in Docker containers - everything went to hell and I got really weird errors about more than one of my non-functioning containers. I asked for help on multiple forums and NO ONE could tell me what the problem was or how to fix it — which is precisely why I’m starting from scratch again and why I’m going with Hass.io this time, with all that stuff running as add-ons rather than in separate Docker containers.
Sorry to try and help, and to correct your misapprehensions about docker. Unsubscribing from this thread. Good luck.
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As far as I know if you want to run Hass.io you will not be able to run it without docker. Yes there is HassOS, but to my knowledge this still runs on docker.
( Hass.io OS based on buildroot. It’s a hypervisor for Docker and supports various kind of IoT hardware. It is also available as virtual appliance. The whole system is optimized for embedded system and security. You can update the system simple with OTA updates or offline updates.)
The only option you have if you really don’t want docker is either an install on linux or within a python venv. Just know that when you go this route there are several advantages and disadvantages vs Hass.io.
Advantage using HA instead of Hass.io:
- it starts up much faster
- it has a full OS running underneath it so it could be purposed for other things without the need for docker
- you can easily access the console/logs
- there is imho a lesser security threat as when you use Hass.io. This is because you can install addons like portainer with a single click, same goes for configurator or vscode. Why is this imho opinion less secure then? Well if they find a way into your Hass.io instance, they will literally have access to everything including your secrets.yaml file. The reason I say this is because I have found people posting this on github and even after I warned them they still have their repos online with the including secrets.yaml file. Now if you protect your setup well enough this shouldn’t pose a problem but still I find it important to mention. Also know that not installing an addon will make no difference because when they have access to your hassio instance they will also have access to the addons and they can add stuff like portainer very easily. If you do intend to use portainer please use it locally only!
- it is a lot easier to troubleshoot stuff with regular HA
Advantages Hass.io vs standard HA:
- you have a lot of addons available for hassio which are not available for HA. Some might work on both like the xbox one component but most are written specifically for Hassio.
- hassio is a lot easier to use because of these addons and imho a lot more versatile
- hassio is easier to setup as you don’t need to setup ssh/samba etc from the cmd line/ssh terminal. Again this is because of addons.
Thanks for the input, Jim. I’m cool with Hass.io running in a Docker container. No worries - no one seems to have any mysterious Docker problems in conjunction with Hass.io. But a recommendation was made to install Portainer and my thinking is that if I’m not running anything else in a Docker container (because I’d much rather have all that running within a trouble-free Hass.io container than in separate Docker containers which have proven to be a nightmare for me in the past) - then I probably don’t need Portainer. (Am I wrong about that? Is Portainer still somehow beneficial if my only container is my Hass.io container? And if Portainer is running as an add-on inside my Hass.io container, does that even make sense?)
The community add-ons are a big reason why I want to go with Hass.io - I’ve tried setting up several components in an HA environment and had lots of headaches. I’m hoping that add-ons in Hass.io will be more plug-n-play.
None of the add-ons run inside hassio. It doesn’t do docker inside of docker.
Add-ons are other docker containers running alongside hassio on the same host. It’s not really any different at all to running docker and managing it yourself.
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You can do all this if you install Hass.io using the generic install method on Ubuntu/Raspbian. Hass.io then has a full OS under it (ubuntu, debian, raspbian).
That is what you asked for - guidance on the best way forward. SSD’s and SD cards are apart of that, how do you not understand that? Providing that information IS being helpful, it’s helping to guide you to the best install practices that others worked out. That is exactly what you wanted, “Advice for someone starting from scratch” so don’t bash people for providing that info.
You can still manage your Hass.io containers from Portainer. Portainer is not going to break you Hass.io install. You can install Portainer from inside Hass.io as an ad-on if you wish, I always prefer to install it manually, personal preference.
Again, here is a full guide ( I provided a .txt. link earlier), start to finish, that will help you achieve exactly what you want. Follow it, or don’t.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oKhnQ1rz-Yd5HheA8rNk5YNq8e67-5Kh
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[quote=“flamingm0e, post:31, topic:135555”]
None of the add-ons run inside hassio. It doesn’t do docker inside of docker.
Add-ons are other docker containers running alongside hassio on the same host. It’s not really any different at all to running docker and managing it yourself.
[/quote]Oh. I assumed the add-ons were running inside the Hass.io container. I didn’t realize that the add-ons were separate Docker containers. Yeah, Docker containers inside a Docker container doesn’t make much sense. Clearly, I won’t be avoiding Docker like the plague! Thanks for clearing up my misconception, Flamingmoe!
If you ever get around to installing Portainer, you will be able to see all the Docker containers, including the ones that you have installed via Hass.io. Every add-on is a separate Docker container.