So I am very confused. There is hassbian and then the Hassio. Is the Hassbian no longer supported? I have tried both of these systems and they are very different. The Hassio does not allow any openbox configuration via bash. The hassbian seemed to work fine with bash commands. Guidance would be greatly appreciated. This is my first home assistant project and I really want to get this going.
Edit:
Just to say first, Hassbian and Hass.io are just two (of many) ways of installing the Home Assistant software.
Hassbian is definitely still supported. The latest version based on Raspbian stretch was released recently.
That’s correct. Its a closed system that prevents any messing around, to stop its users breaking it.
This is also correct. Hassbian is basically a Raspbian image with HA already installed and a number of scripts to help set up other things you might want do. But it is still Raspbian, so that you can do anything you would want with a Raspbian image, such as install other software, or change openbox settings.
It depends on what you want to do. If you want an appliance like set up, that is largely plug and play, you should install hass.io If you want to dig around, install other software, or generally use or Pi for other stuff, hassbian is a good choice.
Alternatively, if you already have a raspian image with software installed that you want to keep using, the All-in-one installer is probably what you should use (although the docker install is available as well)
Are you pinging the hostname or IP? I had the same problem, I found the IP my DHCP server had assigned to it and I was able to connect to the web GUI using the IP address. Seems like a DNS issue on my LAN.