Deprecating Core and Supervised installation methods, and 32-bit systems

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Backup used to just be a toggle I did on every single update but as I understand it because some people ran their systems out of disk space we got this wonderful new backup schedule system. Which is why I mention the 24TB NAS - I don’t just backup there - everything is there and there’s no shortage of space.

The new system would have been fine if they had left the existing mechanism alone which did not happen and I actually did a few updates with no safety net.

I am not sure I have ever seen any feeback requests but I would have chimed in about both this deprecation choice and the backup system as well which for me only complicated things.

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I agree the first iteration of the new backup system was horrible, but they backed down on several things, like required encryption and no backups when doing updates.
You might want to try it now.

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Ya - thanks but no thanks. I preferred the old way. Would really like to be able to fully revert tbh. Multiple NAS boxes at various different places already setup to snapshot and sync backups offsite every night.

I’m going to follow this advice which I must have skimmed over when first reading the deprecation announcement:

Before you think about migrating to a different installation method, you can always choose to stick with what you have. Just because it becomes unsupported by the Home Assistant project, it doesn’t mean you can’t keep running it like you do today. That choice is up to you.

I do like choice. I think I’m gonna do that.

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I understand that supporting more options requires more resources. But honestly, Supervised was the best way of running HA. You had the full OS experience (with updates and addons), while being able of installing a missing driver or using multiple disks. For me, the OS version is like buying a commercial device: it’s something you can’t touch or customise at all, you’re just a passive consumer.

Are there any plans to allow at least minimal OS customization, like having Frigate use a different disk (which makes 100% sense), or installing drivers for hardware we have on the computer running HA? This kind of things would make OS an option for more Supervisor users.

I know there’s always Container, but that’s not how HA is designed to work, with more and more features requiring fiddling to run (which worked out of the box in Supervisor). In fact, it probably made more sense to deprecate Container, offering a partial HA experience, than Supervisor, which offers the whole experience…

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If you want to continue using that method, then do it.
This deprecation will just hide it from new and ordinary users, except for the 32bit, which will die completely.

The supervised and core setups with 64bit will still be used by developers.
The setup might require a compiling now and then, instead of a easy to install package, but it will still be available.

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FYI, that thread was started on April 22, 2025, and spent a few weeks as the #1 sticky post at the right side of forum post lists before the decision was made to proceed with the proposed deprecations and that thread un-stickied…

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I did already edit and correct myself but all I can think of now is Hitchhiker’s Guide… you’ve got to build bypasses.

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So, thread started in April and decision made in May, seems like a sound and complete way to collect data and conclude… Not.

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No OP but… Managing a docker container is not the same as managing the orchestration of many docker containers and facilitating their config and communication.

supervised (with addons) is more akin to kubernetes replacement than “just use docker.” I don’t want manage either k8s or purchase all new hardware. I have personally bought into orange pis and am about to migrate to 8-core 32GB RAM arm system but HAOS doesn’t work because of lack of kernel modules (drivers).

My 2c: I get the decision is done but it is a bit taxing to read non-arguments to “just use docker” when it’s not even remotely comparable.

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No problem with Code Server on Supervised installation.

But bad move from HA team. In fact Supervised is the best choice. It’s HAOS installed with full control of your OS and your environment.

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This is incorrect. If you change the OS in any way then your supervised installation was already considered unsupported.

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I didn’t think I asked anything.

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Quick question on the capabilities of HAOS…
I am running supervised sice many years.

I am using an external USB raid drive, mounted with NFS partitions to store:

  1. Nextcloud addon files
  2. Frigate addon files
  3. Immich addon files
  4. Transmission-OpenVPN addon files

As I read there are some limits in the way you can configure HAOS, Will I be able to keep using the same setup with HAOS ?

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Coming across this blog post as a Supervised installation method user whilst completely renovating my NAS was a bit unexpected and made my weekend a bit more hectic than I initially planned.

However I do want to say, extreme kudos to all involved in the backup/restore functionality in HA. I moved from a Debian-Supervised install to a ProxMox-HAOS install and other than some growing pains of never using proxmox in the past, it was extremely simple.

Thanks everyone for all the hard work and can’t wait to see where we as a community continue to progress.

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Supervised was my choice of installation, because i have no spare computer to run ha os natively and don’t want do run it as a vm when i can run in directly on my server :frowning:

On may 26, 2020 you said “We recently announced that we wanted to deprecate the generic Home Assistant installer. We discovered that the installation method was more popular than expected and we put that plan on hold.”

and i think it it still more popular as you expect :frowning:

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Supervised installation prohibits any other installation on the OS, so you are not running a supported installation.

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If HAOS is able to boot on your hardware, then it will likely work if your USB raid is hardware based.

If your RAID is software based (like mdadm), then I’m not sure. Unlikely, since most distros don’t include mdadm by default; but I defer to those who run HAOS to chime in on built-in mdadm support.

As others pointed out, if you modify HAOS (like installing mdadm), then the maintainers consider your install “unsupported” which in that case you might as well keep running supervised since that will be more stable than HAOS.

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It does not stop you. I installed nginx and terminate TLS since the addons for securing HA don’t meet my needs; I have my own certificate authority and the nginx config was easy enough with online samples. I added a strict firewall (iptables/nftables) which prevents inbound connectivity to home assistant unsecured.

There’s a difference between “can’t” and “maintainers would like you to not do that”. Generally, as long as you’re not doing anything too crazy supervised seems to work fine in those conditions.

I do think minimizing what you do in order to lower the chance of you breaking a dependency of supervised is ideal.

If you do need to do something to the OS to meet your needs, it is best to be aware of supervised dependencies and stay outside of those boundaries.

Which, with supported documentation, was easy to do. I don’t know how easy it will be going forward; I’ll see I guess.

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I was somewhat sad to see this news, but I can see that this decision is more than well justified, and I fully support it.

I’m a Core user, and have been since I first tried HA in 2020. I’m comfortable administering Linux systems because I have done so in one capacity or another for over 20 years.

Even so, I’ve encountered my fair share of headaches with upgrades. It can be a very subtle dance to keep the operating system AND software packages like HA reasonably up-to-date. Often, the pressure of that awareness just keeps me from making updates, which is hardly good from a usability perspective.

There is a lot of misunderstanding in the posts above about what deprecating the installation method means. It doesn’t mean that it will cease to exist; it means that the developers aren’t going to help you make it work on your end.

The documentation has for at least 5 years been pretty clear, at least with respect to Core: the installation method is an at-your-own-risk endeavor, and therefore you’d better know what you’re doing. In view of that, I think that for those folks who opted for Core installation and did so with due respect to the documentation’s admonitions, you’re probably not going to mind the installation method being deprecated–you already have the skills you need to overcome issues.

If you don’t, the devs are possibly doing you a favor: sooner or later most people’s Core installation will turn on them in a way that strains their ability to fight back. It might not have happened yet, but it’s a question of when it will happen, not if.

Looking at it more positively, I am encouraged that the development team thinks that HAOS and Container are robust enough to be the preferred backbone. In view of that confidence from a development team that I respect, I’m going to give one or both of them a try, even though I confess that, before reading the news today, I had zero interest in devoting time delve into them. Much like the development team hopes that time previously spend supporting Core installations wiIl prove valuable to actually developing HA features, I’m guessing some of the time I’d have wasted in the future maintaining my own Core installation will prove valuable to actually developing my automated home, the whole point of having the HA installation.

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Since docker is one of the two recommended architectures, where is the guide on how to migrate from Supervised->Docker? In three days of searching, all I found was a statement “do backup on Supervised, restore files to container volumes”. But that is hardly exhaustive. Multiple addons have data in different locations. That simple statement does not cut it as a “migration guide” for HA Supervised install using some of the most common addons, like node-red, zigbee2mqtt, mosquitto, mariadb.
Can someone direct me to resources discussing that migration in detail? And - if these do not exist - can HA team create such a guide now, that you somewhat forcing the migration? (No, I am not interest in migrating to HAOS).