My guess is that you have enough information now to make the call. Thanks for canvassing this Sean.
1 Like
Like I mentioned in my previous post, you have already made suggestions in polls in this thread. Anyone who doesn’t want to read this post, or doesn’t visit the forums regularly enough to contribute misses out on having their say, simple as that. As you said, you can’t please everyone. Make a shortlist based on what is already being selected from the existing polls and start a locked thread with no comments, voting only. I think 1-2 weeks for a shortlisted poll to run is ample. Again, if users can’t be bothered and don’t visit the forums enough to be involved, then they miss out.
The fact you started the discussion is a credit to you and I very much appreciate the effort you have made so far. The community is used to retrospective discussion about decisions that have already been made and then getting sharp or snide replies when we disagree. In this case, people have the ability to give some input and feel like they have been involved in the process. That is a good thing and hopefully something that continues. Don’t be disheartened by vigorous discussion.
Based on your interaction on the forums I believe you have the ability to make a well educated decision on how to move this discussion forward. You won’t please everyone, and you don’t have too. I think there is more than enough information gathered already to take things to the next step.
3 Likes
Except it isn’t plug and play. I keep saying this, it’s not a toaster. You don’t just take it from a box, plug it in and it works. This image based install still takes some skill to install, set up and then to maintain.
Take off your software/dev hat for a moment and re-think it based on a new user, who hasn’t been around software before and doesn’t understand industry standard names or terms. They hear about Home Assistant and come to the web site to check it out. They have a few Hue light bulbs and some Wemo switches. They see Home Assistant Appliance as the go to method.
The first thought for an overwhelming number of people won’t be, “oh yes, I know that’s an industry standard name for software - this makes sense to me”, they’ll think it’s a PC/box/thingy they have to purchase, because that’s what most people understand an appliance as - something you purchase, like a fridge or toaster.
If it’s the go-to, recommended method for a new user, the name needs to be representative of what a new user will understand, not what is the industry standard in a field they have no idea about.
3 Likes
I couldnt agree with @kanga_who more.
It’s also clear that you have not comprehended the reason for Sean’s topic as you have (for some unknown reason) appended ‘appliance’ to everything in sight.
You say ‘appliance’ is an industry standard term - in what ? The IT field ? So let’s see, that’s maybe 0.5% of the world’s population (and I’m biasing that as obviously all your friends work in IT too). Now who are we saying this software is applicable for ? Well pretty much anyone who has a home (and I admit that’s not a 100% but) I think my teams bigger. And what do ‘they’ think an appliance is ? Summary it’s a white goods commodity, you buy it, you plug it in, it does what it says on the tin. You feed it (pick from list) water/soap powder/dishwasher tablets/bread etc. And it just does its thing.
With the best will in the world HA is not that.
Sorry, I have doubted before to response… maybe it’s my not native english speaking… but I think a “home assistant” whatever it may be can for sure be an “appliance”, it’s just a thing that’s capable of assisting in your home. Like any other appliance, washer, dryers, my wife, etc.
This is what wiki say about it:
And this is “not” a home appliance (what you are referring to above):
Home Assistant Pure Install. I’m not convinced about the name but i like the acronym! 
Thank you for understanding.
I’ve just been a little frustrated in general, because the number one critique from renaming it to “Home Assistant” was against repurposing an existing name for something else. And now the two frontrunners are both a previously used name (“All-In-One”) and a currently used name (“OS”) which is kind of repeating that same problem in my eyes.
If I would’ve omitted those choices from the poll I’d be raked over the coals for that, so I allowed voting on them still despite knowing they were problematic. And of course now they’re the two frontrunners and seem destined to win, despite a chance they’ll end up getting vetoed by the team due to the aforementioned problems.
So it feels like we’re heading towards an inevitable shit storm that is entirely caused by me, all because of a poll that I did not spend long enough thinking through. I take full responsibility for that, mainly stressed that if (when?) this whole thing backfires and goes badly, I’ll be the reason that the team gets cold feet on reaching out to the community in the future. I don’t like having that in the back of my mind. This among other things caused me to have some second thoughts.
I’ll ask the others about how to best proceed after I wake up. I would be OK with continuing to handle this but it feels like too much “walking on eggshells” at the moment.
2 Likes
If the team don’t want to continue to reach out in the future based on one thread or discussion, that would show and lack of maturity, close mindedness and would be detrimental to the project. People have varying and opposing views, some right, some wrong, some indifferent. That is not a reflection on you, so don’t take it personally.
2 Likes
SeanM, you’ve explained the Poll is just to help inform decisions and to gauge the feel of the community. I, for one, really appreciate this approach and there may be many other reasons why the forerunners don’t get chosen. There’s also a possibility that someone will come up with a cracker that the majority get behind. Hopefully more and more members will post some alternatives and it can spark ideas for others.
Keep up the good work mate, there’s not one right or wrong way to engage with such a large, diverse group of people so hats-off to you for all the effort you put in to this community and the thoughtfulness you’ve shown in starting this topic 
3 Likes
The world in general, is a collection of sub-optimised parts, which (if we are lucky) are generally flying in the same direction and at roughly the same speed.
Anyone who lives in amongst that and tries to make it better is to be applauded, not castigated. As you can see many others think the same.
This also applies to Frenk, Paul’s, Cogneato, cgtobi, pascal et al (sorry guys I can’t name everyone) to whom we owe a huge debt of thanks.
2 Likes
The problem with something like “One” is when you then have version >1 of the application. We should learn from the mistakes of the highly paid Sony Marketing Executives and avoid repeating the abomination of Xperia 1 II that they ended up with, for the same reason!
And just some general thoughts (I may be waaaay off track here, but)…
If this name change is not about branding and just to make the installation method clearer, then wouldn’t it make more sense just stick to the facts and say what they are?
Home Assistant OS. None of the others offer the OS. The OS does nothing without the rest of the Home Assistant bits (as far as I know? Its not like I can install HAOS and run something other than HA on there, is it?) so stating you have the OS implies you have all the rest of the bits anyway (supervisor, add-ons, snapshots and OS)
Home Assistant for Debian. If Debian is going to be the only officially supported Linux distro.
Home Assistant for Docker.
Home Assistant Python App.
Combining those descriptive based names with Taras’ table, makes it quite clear what you are getting, IMHO.
I really don’t like “Coretainer”. I get the idea, but again, just stick to common naming in my opinion, and let the table explain what you get and what you don’t get.
If the idea is for the community to be able to better understand what people are running in order to assist them, then we need to know what each installation method offers, more than the user installing it. So we don’t need to call the Docker version, or the Python App version “Lite” or the Debian or OS version “Complete”, as once we know the name, we know what it contains.
example:
I can’t get the hass.io add-on for InfluxDB to install!
What version of HA did you install?
Home Assistant for Docker.
Bingo, thats the problem, add-ons are not supported.
etc.
Maybe I have misunderstood the purpose of this thread, but that was my take away from trying to read and digest as much as possible!
2 Likes
Appliance is not a new term and is used in the installation documentation, mainly referring to “virtual appliances” and “appliance image”. The reality is that Home Assistant requires you to learn technical terms and they will run into terms like URL\URI, domains, IP, mDNS, DNS, SSL, MAC, Network Ports, etc.
Users will without doubt need to learn some technical terms, they will need to know what’s an IP (how to assign a fixed IP), what’s flashing, they will need to learn how to SSH, work on YAML files, etc.
Even for widely used and basic add-ons they will see terminology they are not familiar with, they will have to read the instructions and learn.
Even if everything could be done via UI, these terms will be there, it’s not something you can rename to make it easier.
The terms described here except for the All-in-one (or similar descriptive terms) are all pointless, it doesn’t tell anyone anything like Gold, Plus, Premium, Ultimate, Diamond, Snap, etc.
They’re not different tiers of software/subscription, it’s just different installation methods.
Yes, some “methods” will come with the supervisor so users get the “Add-ons” tab so they can install these applications easily but they’re mainly someone else’s applications, some were created purposely and only for HomeAssistant. These applications are out there and can be installed onto most machines with Docker (for certain architectures you might have to create your own build, this is probably the biggest benefit since thanks to the HomeAssistant team they’ve done this for us and added dependencies of some of these applications since some of these docker images required for example an external database).
I am no software/dev engineer or whatever you call it but I work within the IT industry.
It is just my personal opinion, having an installation method All-in-one is not terrible but not ideal.
Having an installation method called Premium, Ultimate, Plus, Platinum, Max, Easy, Snap does not tell me anything about the method or technology itself and makes it more confusing to my view, unless you put a table like the ones previously made to show the actual installation method and features available. And if I am not seeing the table I won’t remember, I will always have to look at the table. Then there’s the problem that comes up when there’s a new installation method, you will have to start renaming/reassigning the “tiers”. If you call it by what it is, there’s no such issue.
So Diamond will be the former hassio? Platinum the supervised linux install? Gold the container? Silver the Home Assistant Core?
It feels confusing and like one is better than the other. To my view it is better to use precise and concise terms like docker appliance/container, VM appliance, etc. Just by looking at the term I know it goes straight in Docker or that it is a VM image, call it by what it is.
The table is fantastic and surely it would be a great addition in the documentation, when I first installed HomeAssistant I made the wrong choice and was puzzled on why I didn’t have the add-ons tab.
In my case, a thoughtless drafted table as example:
|Name|Add-ons|Snapshots|OS|Docker|Method|
|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|
|Appliance|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Disk image (2)|
|Supervised Linux|Yes|Yes|No|Yes|Shell script (3)|
|Docker Container|No|No|No|Yes|Docker container (4)|
|HomeAssistant Core|No|No|No|No|Python app (5)|
Note: Most add-ons applications are publicly available docker containers that can be manually installed and maintaned on your own.
Note Description 1 Burn disk-image for your model of single-board computer/NUC or as a Virtual Machine. 2 Execute shell script on an existing instance of Linux. 3 Installed as a simple docker container. 4 Install python app in a virtual python environment.
While to a certain degree it sounds odd, like they might have to purchase an appliance it is clarified in the instructions and seems clear to me once you have the table or mention the different flavors. The recommended method is the appliance because it includes everything, you can either get an single board computer and burn the image for it or here’s the VM image so you can put it in your computer with the hypervisor of your choice. But we’re talking about installation methods not software tiers or subscriptions, definitely most of the names suggested do not make a lot of sense to me. Just my two cents.
1 Like
I’m still trying to look at this from the perspective of a new user. That user can, generally, be Technical or Non-Technical. The Technical ones break down into those ‘technical’ in the technologies we are talking about here (Docker, Debian (Linux), Python et.al.) or not (e.g. Windows, networking, databases, electronics etc.).
So, yes if we are naming The Installation Method maybe it is the best idea after all to just name it literally by it’s, err, installation method? The branding surely, is in the Home Assistant prefix. We are not naming the product here, just the way to install it.
Which brings me to ‘Home Assistant OS’. I really don’t like this. A new user isn’t looking for an OS, they are looking for a software package (Suite ? 
) that will automate their home. Why do they need to know it is a whole OS? OS to non technical people suggest something at a much lower level and something that ‘manages/supervises’ more than just one app (I use the term loosely).
I still say that ‘the old hassio’ is to new users in general and the non-technical ones in particular, conceptually very different from the other ‘methods’.
I wonder if the starting point should be that everyone who comes to HA for the first time should have as their very first perception, the idea that they should install (what was) ‘hassio’.
Those technical in the HA technologies will see the alternatives and be free to delve further, those technical in non HA technologies will have enough knowledge to register the options, delve further or just wait until they are comfortable doing so.
And a quick note to @SeanM
I too am very thankful that this conversation is taking place and in no way hold you responsible for any outcome from it. It is as others have said a refreshing and very welcome improvement in communication strategy from what we have seen recently which was making me feel a little like an inconvenience to the project.
8 Likes
Since “Home Assistant OS” seems to get many votes:
If you call the whole thing “Home Assistant (implied “plus”) OS”, how would you call the actual underlying OS? Perhaps “Home Assistant OS OS”? Or “The OS Home Assistant OS runs on”?
Good points klogg. I guess using OS just denotes it takes over the whole device (be it a SBC or a VM), rather than something that is installed as an application (which package and suite suggests, to me at least). Partly why I don’t like Appliance, if I mentioned that to my dad for example, he would be expecting to buy a complete hardware/software box that he just plugged in and went with.
This is really tricky!
1 Like
In any brainstorming activity, there can be a tendency to discount ideas based on their flaws but the problem with that is an idea could spark something for someone else that is more suitable, or better. With this in mind, I would recommend that all and any idea is thrown in to the mix, at this stage, and then discounted at a much later date.
I’m only making suggestions for the Home Assistant disk-image install, as I think the others are closer to a solution.
Home Assistant Origin (implying it is a starting point for new users).
So maybe my last post was more picky than constructive. Maybe this one is better:
How about sticking with the table idea but substituting “Supervised” with “Managed”, since “supervised” seems to have kinda negative bias. This would result in:
Home Assistant Managed OS
Home Assistant Managed Container (maybe without “Container”)
Home Assistant Container
Home Assistant Core
2 Likes
Don’t be so hard on yourself. I appreciate your initiative. It was important for the community to express their opinions and vote for a name. If the core team rejects the choice, should their be a so-called “shitstorm” it will be of their making, not yours.
Had there been no poll, and yet another unsolicited rebranding occured, it wouldn’t have been appreciated either. This is the better path, regardless of the outcome, and I thank you for taking the time to compile the suggestions into a poll.
As for the poll’s design, I encourage you to google how to create an unbiased poll. You’ll discover that this one wasn’t nearly as unbiased as you may believe. On that basis alone, the core team could justify a veto. Hopefully, they’ll simply accept one of the community’s top choices.
3 Likes
You are missing the point that the ‘supervisor’ is the name of the component (that no-one particularly has a problem with) that you are now trying to rename and is contained in two of the listed methods.
We are only (asked here) trying to find a name for the new hass.io
Trying to ensure that new users are guided to the preferred * method of install.
‘* preferred’ in this case being, simplest to install / manage / support / give the widest set of functionality before the user gains experience and finds issues that don’t particularly work in their usage case and decide to move on given their expanded understanding of the ecosystem.
Ooh! I never thought of it like that. How about Home Assistant Starter? That surely indicates what/who it is for, even if not necessarily the installation method. And just because you start with it, doesn’t mean you need to change if you are happy with what it offers (which is everything in this case).
1 Like