Completely agree.
To their credit though, it’s the first time they have seriously listened to the backlash and perhaps reevaluated the decision. I stay hopeful.
I’ve found it interesting that Frank has been almost silent throughout this post, he is normally the most vocal backing decisions.
That’s your opinion, I have no problem to maintain updated a Raspbian image… it’s obviously more complicated to add another layer with a VM if you have a system with constrained resources.
What I really don’t understand is why for long time the Linux+docker method was supported and now is considered unsupported. I had no problems at all with this kind of configuration.
Your idea of Home Assistant is like an Apple customer that wants a device that just works, my idea is a configurable system, where I can use a Docker container if Hassio don’t offer the functionality I need with an Add-on.
You can’t force me to buy another device only because Hassos can’t run anything but Home Assistant.
The problem it’s not for you, because Hassos will continue to exist, but for people like me that wants a customizable system without buying new hardware.
That’s why the guide in the getting started section explains every steps for beginners with a raspberry pi, tinkerboard, odroid or Intel nuc.
If you’re an advanced user, you can try the VM version, docker or the venv version with python, or the installer on generic linux.
So no, Home Assistant is not in my opinion for power users but for beginners and power users. You just have to pick what suits you best. And I don’t think it should be only for beginners because power users want to do more than just run only Home Assistant on their machine…
Final thought: the docs need some clean up. The links to the virtual appliances should be in the alternative installation methods section, for example. And in the beginners section a how-to install on a nuc could be great 
I agree but effectively that’s saying it should be a hardware clone. If just one sub-system is different, the experiment fails.
It would be interesting to hear from people who managed to get the NUC image working on a non-NUC machine. If there’s a reliable, inexpensive, hardware clone of a NUC, I’m sure it would be of interest to some users.
Personally, I hope at least one Linux distro is officially supported. It opens the door to using almost any x86 machine, including the 10-year old laptop that’s currently running my production instance of Home Assistant Supervised (Ubuntu).
true, however, that data isn’t used. Furthermore, it does not contain the information regarding this subject. For example, generic Linux supervised installation cannot be extracted from this.
I opened a feature request for a HassOS on generic intel/amd hardware.
What route would you suggest investigating that would allow HassOS & Supervisor & Core and the ability to use a generic linux installation on the same piece of hardware? Something that will be supported long term.
I agree the analytics data doesn’t report the OS but, correct me if I’m wrong, I have the impression this is by choice and not due to any technical limitation to acquire it
For example, Supervisor > System > Information > Host System reveals that my instance is based on Ubuntu:
If it already knows the underlying OS it may as well include it in the analytics data it is reporting. It will provide decision-makers with better visibility into Home Assistant’s installed base.
But the weird thing is I do have Hassio (Supervised) installed on this NUC with Linux.
Please don’t deprecate the Supervisor. I really like how it works and a VM would introduce a bigger load I cannot use on my system.
Potentially the only real issue I see (not having any real knowledge of Alpine Linux) is that I would guess that the majority of users already run some form of Debian Linux (Debian, Raspbian, Ubuntu,…)
The path you suggest would require every one of those users (including me 
) to completely wipe out their existing OS’s and reinstall Alpine Linux in addition to all the other stuff they had on their current system.
Do you have any idea what the breakdown in user base for non-specialty (i.e. non-pro, hobbyist type) users is across the various flavors (or “flavours” for you non-US types 
) of Linux?
I really don’t know and I don’t even know if that metric exists.
But my guess, again, would probably be Debian.
I’m just looking at trying to minimize the pain for the majority of users.
Currently Supervisor is having error. So anyone wont be able to install it. I have it working after fork the code and edit it back to it latest changes before being edited. I hope this will continue as I believe many will want to used it still
Well as it auto updates with no option to stop it doing so there may well be howls of anguish soon…
Alpine Linux is used in the Home Assistant docker containers. All supervisor based and core docker based installations use Alpine Linux…
The updater collects information from the core, the other screenshot is the supervisor, those are two different programs and environments.
This is referencing the suggestion that the only supported base OS could be Alpine, and in most cases, would then require people to wipe and start over.
i.e. I have Ubuntu server installed, and would need to format and start over with Alpine if that was the decision made as the supported OS for generic installs.
I see; it’s in a separate environment. Is it technically feasible to communicate across this divide? Or simply impossible?
Possible, simply not done. As said, the data isn’t used, hence never extended 
It is not referring to that in any way, please read. I highly doubt we could ever support bare metal Alpine Linux.
The current installer is a changes with error in line 17… so unless that being fixed the On Hold is really work the same as depreciating. 