Is there any real advantages to have the hassle to install HA Supervised on Linux instead of install HA OS ?
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You get more control over the underlying operating system. For example, you can install other applications, determine when OS upgrades should be installed, adjust how the OS behaves, etc. Its maintenance is your responsibility.
The underlying operating system in Home Assistant OS is meant to be exclusively for hosting the Home Assistant ecosystem. It updates itself automatically, doesn’t allow installing other applications, and provides little to no control of its behavior. You aren’t responsible for its maintenance.
Based on the information gathered by Home Assistant’s analytics, most users choose Home Assistant OS.
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I have haos installed in a vm and have full control on the linux host so I cant see any advantages.
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Your original question didn’t introduce the topic of virtual machines. You simply asked for the advantages of Home Assistant Supervised compared to Home Assistant OS.
If you have it running in a virtual machine then, as you already know, there are two operating systems involved, the one hosting the virtual machine (that’s the one you have control over) and the one within the virtual machine that hosts Home Assistant (the one you have little to no control over).
That scenario doesn’t represent a comparison of two installation methods but of three installation methods (the third being Home Assistant OS in a VM).
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But still no answer what the advantage is. When I say I use HAOS in a vm I get to hear so often that haos is for newbis and supervised for the pros. But noone can tell me why. I am aware of the extra layer. But really superviser work in full docker which is not the easiest platform.
This is not the same question you posed in your first post.
To address your new question, in terms of maintenance responsibility the user must shoulder:
- Home Assistant OS on bare-metal represents the least amount of maintenance responsibility.
- Home Assistant OS in a virtual machine on a host operating system represents the most responsibility.
- Home Assistant Supervised on bare-metal falls between the two.
In terms of flexibility the user has, depending on one’s needs, it’s a coin-toss between HAOS in a VM and HA Supervised. HAOS on bare-metal is the least flexible.
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I would like to offer my 2c, with experience on all HA installation options and multiple hypervisors.
Taras, you are quite right saying bare-metal HAOS is the least flexible. However, I do not believe it is a coin toss between Supervisor and HAOS in a VM. Why?
One reason being, running in a VM affords the flexibility of testing any HA update prior to committing it to production, by simply copying the production VM, updating it and testing it. If the new copied VM performs with no issues it becomes your new production, while the older version is just a backup. You can do this multiple times with virtually no downtime. Did I say it is so easy even the inexperienced can manage it? Try this on Supervisor even with oodles of experience.
For any user, even the experienced, there is no contest. HAOS deployed in a VM is the BEST of any other option. If you have time read some of my other posts why I am a passionate advocate of HAOS in a VM, assuming you are not operating on a minuscule budget, in which case possibly your only option is bare-metal (HAOS has been designed for resource constrained environments).
If someone is an experienced user, has oodles of time in their hands, like to fiddle or are constrained on financial resources, yeah Supervisor is an option. But for the vast majority of people, Supervisor should be the last option someone considers.
Obviously if someone is tinkering, Supervisor can be a good learning vehicle (but still limited compared to virtualisation). Lastly, if your house depends on HA to function, Supervisor should not be an option anyone should consider.
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True; it speaks to the degree of flexibility one requires. Many users simply upgrade their production system and rollback if it proves to be problematic.
Ultimately, what is considered to be an advantage or disadvantage depends on where the user’s needs lie on the spectrum of simplicity vs flexibility.
In my case, I have no desire for the added maintenance responsibility of a virtual machine manager nor for the added flexibility of supporting multiple virtual machines. However I do need more flexibility than what Home Assistant OS provides so I’ve opted for Home Assistant Supervised.
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That is how I have reasoned!
That’s simply nonsense.
I’ve been running Home Assistant Supervised on an old laptop for about 3 years without any showstoppers. Prior to that I ran Home Assistant Container (on Ubuntu).
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What is your reason to do it? I am sure there are people out there that have no problem but there must be an advantage that I cant see. Please enlighten us
If you want to know the reasons then you should read the ones I posted above. So far, it doesn’t appear you’ve read any of them. Tell me what you understood from what I wrote. If you can’t, or won’t, do that then your questioning is not in good faith, it’s simply trolling.
Well the only thing you wrote is that it is a cointoss which one to use. That tell me that HAOS is a perfect choise for home automation without to be a full fledged programmer. And I remember for a few years ago the developers thought of not supporting that version. But anyway I have got the answer I wanted
no… supervised serves a very specific need. Those needs these days are dwindling. If you’re running VMs, just set up HassOS and have a separate VM for anything else you want to do. Otherwise supervised is not worth the hassle.
FWIW, the only reason I’m still on supervised is because I’m too lazy to switch to HassOS. With the community terminal ssh addon, you can literally do everything you can with supervised.
IMO when Home Assistant adds the ability to map/mount network drives, there won’t be any reason to run supervised.
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Just a reflection. I run my VM on Debian 10. It seems odd to have another VM with linĂşx on it to run the other things. Like the NVR and MariaDb so I run them on the host
I’d like to ask if you do not mind, when was the last time you updated Supervisor and Core. Without understanding how many add-ons, integrations/devices and automations you are running and how much your house depends on them it is difficult to judge the kind of system you are running.
Seeing the kind of problems people have when running Supervisor it is difficult to convince me your system has been running flawlessly for 3 years, unless you never updated your system (IoT, HW or SW).
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Yeah, do whatever you want. That’s the beauty of VM. Supervised in relation to what you’re running would be a little more lightweight. If you have a powerful computer, who cares.
Container or HassOS is what most “pros” use for their production machines (if they have them). It’s really nice having a set it and forget it system. Supervised does not give you that. You’ll have to manage supervised every now and then when you update.
in speak of hassle and maintenance i found supervisor tops the topology, so if one not have “that” specific needs for a supervisor, i would sleep better with any other setup … best scenario for a supervisor, seems to be “setup what you need, leave running, don’t touch it and don’t change anything” not in the host either(or in specific) so that seems to degrade supervisor to a HassOS
ps: have not tried HassOS, but im thinking about going towards a HassOS in VM, when im more familiar with HA, as i still need a linux-server for other purpose
I have been running Home Assistant for about four years now. For perspective, that’s about 3 years before you joined this community forum.
Initially I used Home Assistant Core on Ubuntu but, after about 8 months, I switched to Home Assistant Supervised on Ubuntu. Eventually I switched to Debian when it was chosen to be the only distro to receive official support.
Currently, my production system employs 6 add-ons, 12 integrations via config-flow and several others via YAML. I keep it updated to the latest release (plus patch releases when needed). I’ve lost count of how many times I have upgraded since I started using Home Assistant.
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Supervisor is a management piece implemented as a Docker container. It exists in the Home Assistant OS and Home Assistant Supervised installation methods.
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Supervised is the identifier for Home Assistant Supervised which is effectively Home Assistant OS minus the operating system.
If you believe Supervisor causes problems then its impact wouldn’t be limited to Home Assistant Supervised because Supervisor also exists in Home Assistant OS.
Frankly, what you choose to believe or not doesn’t concern me. Whatever issues I have experienced after an upgrade have been largely due to bugs in integrations (and affect all installation methods of Home Assistant).
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Fair dues Taras. The only reason I said what I said is to alert people of the rabbit hole they will be entering when using Supervisor, especially if they lack deep technical skills. We want to remove complexity from life not add; I hope!
We are managing more than 100 HA installations, most remotely. Do you think we would be able to manage without HAOS and VMs?
My comments were not a personal attack on you. Sorry if you misunderstood me.
One last comment. Being in any forum even for 50 years does not promote anyone to superhero status. Hope you do not take things personally in the future.