I had not heard the term used, or understood it’s meaning until I had been using HA for some time and actually read the docs. For the most part, a new user doesn’t read the docs to understand things. If you spend any amount of time on the forums on a daily basis, you would recognize this. Many don’t read - they are lazy.
If the name doesn’t represent to the average punter what it does, they will (probably) do one of three things.
Ask on the forums ad nauseam what to do as they don’t understand
Skip over that method altogether and try something else thinking it’s something that it’s not
Forget HA because it all seem too hard.
I agree completely, however, the entry point should be made easy, simple.
This proves my point - you are familiar with the terminology, 99% of the general population who just want to get a few lights and plugs going and saw some YouTube video about HA, are not.
I agree. “Levels” are not the solution until paid tiers are introduced.
@123 has raised this already, this name should be off the table as it is already used to describe the actual OS, which this install uses.
I’ve been ear bashing my wife with this thread the past couple of days, and tonight she suggested Home Assistant Hive, her reasoning, “because isn’t everything kinda linked together like the honeycomb in a bee hive?”
I would never have thought of that, but she made a great point. Is it a great name for this example, probably not, but it’s interesting to see how others come to think about how things work.
There always seems to be an element within any group that resents being talked down to (regardless that this was not ‘my’ intent and despite them knowing nothing of the landscape) and ‘starter’ may be interpreted by some as ‘primer’ (“until you are ready for solid food” (add your own flavour of patronising tone here)). Added to the fact that many of the devs use this install on Odroid, so it’s not that much of a 3rd class citizen.
It also implies that this is the base model (again not so) and that you may wish to upgrade later. “No! I’m going to max it out now” “That’s why I bought a Hummer to travel to the coffee shop at the end of the street because you never know when my suburban Town will aquire land mines”
You are right, this is hard and though I don’t think “starter” is a bad idea (there are much worse) you have to try to imagine all personality types approaching this and what they’d think.
Whatever it is, not everyone will be happy (but that’s the nature of a democracy) and there’s no guarantee that the devs will go with the winner (eg boaty mc boaty face) and to be fair to them, they have a LOT more invested in this than anybody else.
I guess I’m neither “missing the point” nor “trying to rename”—what I do start missing is the time I invest here. My points are made, whatever comes out of it, I’ll concentrate on my main work again.
And many many thanks to all of you that helped me understand “what is what”, and what install options are actually there!
Great idea. Maybe more participants of this thread could follow that approach. Maybe show their spouses, parents, kids etc. the table posted earlier in this thread, minus the first column. If necessary along with a basic explanation what the difference is. In any case I believe it could be valuable input to gather external, unbiased, opinions on how to name things.
I really like these suggestions. Very straightforward and clear for the technically inclined. I also agree with @klogg’s reasoning. I think Home Assistant Suite is an attractive name for our newbies.
Home Assistant Suite: includes our optimized operating system and a full suite of easy to install add-ons. Recommended for beginners for its ease of installation.
@SeanM I applaud your courage for starting this topic. I think it was clear from the start you were asking for input and recommendations. As I read it, the final decision lies with the core team, as I believe it should.
But… we are only here to talk about a name for the one installation type so Home Assistant Suite.
My main getaway:
The installation type for beginners should spark ‘this is for you!’ to all newbies (‘this is easy to install! this is complete! this is what you want!’). Nothing too technical, let’s lure those newbies into their new hobby
For the other installation types, you don’t need to avoid technical terms like Docker, venv, Debian, OS. Just a descriptive name communicates the differences best, in my opinion. Perhaps it could be ‘Home Assistant for Docker on Debian’, ‘Home Assistant for Docker on any OS’, ‘Home Assistant Python app’. For anyone interested in one of these options, they can dive into a beautiful and detailed comparison table explaining the differences. But no input was asked for those names, so I’ll leave it at that.
To me, the only names that make sense (meaning that they accurately describe what you get, and that I would have understood them when I was new to HA) are All in One or Appliance. I would also accept Suite, but that doesn’t convey that the OS is included and it feels like more things should be pre-installed.
So its an operating system for the Raspberry Pi. Well the normal OS for the RPi is Raspbian so maybe we should just call it Hassbian? Wait that sounds familiar… (I’m kidding with this in case it wasn’t obvious, please only throw soft things at me)
In all seriousness though these names still feel weird to me for an install method. Like someday I could totally see Nabu Casa or someone partnering with them start to sell plug-and-play HA devices. Where they shipped you the device in a box pre-imaged and everything and you just plugged it in and there’s HA. And I imagine that person/company would be extremely tempted to call that device “Home Assistant Hub” (or “Home Assistant Appliance” or “Home Assistant All-In-One” or “Home Assistant One” or… really any of those names would be just fine for such a device).
But as the name for the install method for people bringing their own device? These all feel a bit strange for that. I would just say call it what it is. The thing you download and flash is an image so call main method ‘Image’. Or ‘OS’ if you really want to get technical about it I suppose. The docker method involves getting and deploying a ‘Container’ so call it that. And the venv one, ‘venv’ or ‘python’ or even just ‘git’ all seem fine to me.
Basically whatever the name is for the thing which you are getting and deploying, just make that the name of the install method. Well except I guess the supervised install, that one is tough. Maybe ‘script’? Or just ‘advanced mode’.
Anyway it seems like I’m probably in the minority here so oh well. Just please make sure the developer tools info panel shows the name of the install method used so whenever people have an issue they can just be asked to copy and paste that in.
Frankly, I just want to see some word tacked on to the end of “Home Assistant” so when I’m helping someone I can quickly tell what the hell they’ve installed on their computer. Currently, saying you’re running “Home Assistant” is far too ambiguous.
“Do you mean you installed the one with Add-ons and Snapshots and its own OS or did you just overlook to say you installed Core, Container, or the Supervised version?!?”
I like that actually. It implies it’s the flagship premium installation method.
Here’s the thing. At least with this approach
we are not being blindsided
we are not being ignored
we feel like you guys actually care what we think
we have a say instead of a decision being just imposed out of nowhere
That being said, I think whatever you guys decide will be ok with most of us hopefully…
I didn’t know that home assistant all in one had been used before. No one else has mentioned it so clearly it didn’t catch on but that doesn’t mean it won’t work given the current changes going on.
And to a large extent, that is the nub of the problem - the support offered, depends on the version (or ‘model’ you have). So whatever it ends up as, that needs to be displayed front and center so it is easy for the user to know.
It is also a fact that the previously poorly thought out renaming has made things more difficult.
I have one other name to offer Home Assistant BM - as in Bare Metal. describes it perfectly - it is installed on a bare metal machine be that real or virtual.
Key Thoughts:
I think that Home Assistant is the brand, so the install methods / products the end user is using should be separate from that.
I know Hassos was unloved for many reasons, but it did the job - it was a specific model of Home Assistant.
We should avoid using other products such as Debian and Docker in the name - that might change.
We should retain the ‘good’ names. Personally I think Core and Supervised should remain - the method and end result is the same as it was so let’s simply keep them.
Agreed and it should be a core part of the page that leads you to the decision on the install method.
@SeanM, I think you should pick the ‘low hanging fruit’ and build for there - here are 3 questions to ask…
Should Home Assistant be part of the install/model name or should it be retained for the brand and HA be used for the install/model? Y/N
Should Core be the name for the Python Env install/model? Y/N (so either Home Assistant Core or HA-Core)
Should the Supervised name remain Y/N? (so either Home Assistant Supervised or HA-Supervised)
Name
Supervisor
Add-ons
Snapshots
With OS
Docker
Install Method
HA-OS
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Image
HA-Supervised
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Scripted Docker
HA-Coretainer
No
No
No
No
Yes
Manual Docker
HA-Core
No
No
No
No
No
Python vEnv
You are then left with the other 2 methods to get a name for. Personally I think HA-OS is going to win so we should just accept that.
I would think the hass.io is not even close to what you would consider bare metal. Hassio is the full enchilada… the full works not some stripped down installation. You could call HassOS bare metal but not this.
I don’t think there is a problem with ‘re’ - using a name.
The names that are in question are not familiar in my memory but even if they were, I’m aware of this process and were an old name to come up I don’t think I’d be offended, more likely just intregued. A newbie wouldn’t care (nor should he/she).
I tried to think of a real world example and the only one I could think of was apocryphal
The VW Beetle - I know that it was originally called the type 1. And only informally as the kafer (sorry no umlaut on this tablet) (meaning beetle / ladybug). So just consider it ‘a bit of vintage nostalgia’ (for an industry that’s about 12 years old )
I don’t like the ‘Bare Metal’ suggestion for the same reason’s others gave. BM means nothing to me and I think bare metal will confuse newbies “is it a sub-genre of heavy-metal ?”
so Home Assistant Suite.
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