My question isn’t about how to manage Linux, but rather what are the pros and cons of installing home assistant each of the ways listed. I have a large number of zwave/zigbee switches, sensors and other devices throughout my home that I want to migrate over from smartthings and I want to make sure I get it right. I will get through the struggles and learn, I just wanted advice from people who have experience. There must have been a time where you looked for advice when trying to learn something.
To answer your question, your best way forward at this moment is to use the NUC image to install Home Assistant OS.
This is not a normal OS like Ubuntu, but will do (almost) everything you could want right now, while you are learning.
There are add-ons for;
- Z-wave & Zigbee
- Plex
- MotionEye (camera recording)
- Google drive backup (Snapshot backups)
You could go down the route of using a VM, but to start off with, using the NUC image and base HA OS is your best bet. It is officially supported.
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Kanga, I trust you know that I have considerable respect for what you do and the help you provide on this forum, but what do you mean by this.?
You personally, have provided more support than most on installation options so you know what you have said is ‘questionable’
I would recommend that he go the standard pi route, maybe a 3b with an ssd rather than an SD, buy 1 light switch, get some experience automating it sun rise sun set offsets, times, events (he may decide HA is not for him)
If it is then the snapshots are transferable and he has time to look for a deal.
Buy the right equipment and start building
Though I agree that your proposal is quite an attractive one
Edit: I run the generic Linux installation and even if deprecated expect to be able to use AND update it for a number of years.
This is not a jump or die decision.
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LOL, thanks.
I only suggest this way as the Supervised install method will be deprecated at some point, so I am looking for alternatives myself.
He has the NUC, so using the official NUC image is the easiest and best forward at this time.
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Yep, he already bought the hardware.
My bad
I still want to know what “officially supported” means
The NUC image is supported (currently) in the same way a Pi image is. Things seem to be changing in the HA world at the drop of a hat, but today NUCs are supported out of the box like a Pi.
That’s just blurb, pardon my French.
By whom and on what channels ?
I’ve only ever seen members, supported by other members.
If there is a privy channel it’s well hidden and not very ‘official’
This is starting to sound like an argument but I am honestly not arguing, I genuinely want to know what I’ve missed out on in the last 2.5 years
Thanks for your reply kanga. I didn’t realize that the NUC image would allow for things like camera recording and Plex integration. That sounds like it may be the way to go. From what I’ve read you need to go with a live linux USB as the NUC image is just that - an image and not an installer. So I’ll have to figure out how to install that.
Question - with The snapshot back up, does that allow a reinstall of a differing setup without having to exclude and re-pair all of the devices? If I choose to change in the future I would love to avoid that.
It’s been a while since I had my NUC and did this method, but I believe if you have an SSD and a USB drive adapter, you can burn the NUC image to the SSD using your PC in the same way you would with an SD card using Etcher.
Any new install on different hardware can potentially give you problems with pairing Z-wave devices.
A system snapshot can be downloaded and used to restore on lets say a VM that also uses Home Assistant OS, if you were to change in the future.
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With supported I think you get the possibility to raise issues on GitHub about it and they will get solved (no guarantee on the time that will take) by the dev team.
Not supported means you can go ahead and do whatever you want, but if you run in to problem you rely on your own dev skills or the good will of others to solve it and a long term solution won’t be provided by the dev team. Though everybody is free to fork the code and provide for a long term solution if they want to.
I share your believe about the Linux supervised install probably keep on working for years. I think people are jumping to fast around after the news, or not understanding the news and think they won’t get updates to HA anymore, which is not true.
supervised installation is not gone but yes we don’t know the vision about it with the recent statement.
For who is approaching to HA is not the best method, for now.
If you have enough NUC power i suggest you to install an hypervisor and then install HA as a VM, so you can then use another VM for your things, leaving HA VM alone doing only HA things.
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@frits1980, Thanks, that’s pretty much what I thought except ‘if I break something’ I’m pretty much under the impression that “I” will have to fix it (ie I never expected any support).
So if an OS upgrade interferes with Hassio (ie Supervised) in anyway, I’ll ‘peel’ back the upgrade and sit like that whilst I consider my options, no rush.
@kanga_who, thanks for putting up with the stupid questions.
Hopefully rpf will come out with the new eft for rpi 4 and people can just boot from the ssd which will remove 60% of the issue, and by then we’ll be comfortable enough to have some solid guides on proxmox and venv environments such that even I could follow
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I have an i3 with 500gb ssd and 32gb of ram. Originally I thought I was going big when I purchased it, but now some of the stuff I’m reading makes me think I may have gone a bit too lite. One of the things I would like to look into in the future is face/object recognition with cameras, which I’m thinking might use a lot of resources.
Do you use an hypervisor? if so which one?
i3 + 500gb ssd + 32gg of ram i don’t call it “gone a bit too lite” man 
If you think i’m using, in my parent’s house, HA supervised on linux + solar panel webserver + cloudflare ddns + doods object detection + mqtt + zerotier + wireguard + influxdb + nodered + pihole in a pi 3b+ and everything is running smooth, your config is a beast.
In my home i have a nuc but my main host is Windows 10 so i use hyper-v. Not the best choice but need the nuc for other things than just be an hypervisor ( read it as i need it as a normal pc with monitor ).
All depends on which OS you want as host, then pick an hypervisor you’d like to use or you have knowledge.
The biggest thing you have realize is that if you use a NUC image directly on the SSD then you will have a significantly restricted base OS.
If you go that route then pretty much the only apps you will be able to add on to your machine will be only those that are available as add-ons thru HA - unless you can figure out how to use Portainer to run new containers (which I’ve never done so I don’t know how feasible it is). Even then you will be limited on what you can run on your machine to only those apps that are available as a Docker container. That may be OK for what you ultimately want to to but just be aware of that strict limitation.
That is my concern - now I’m leaning towards running it in a VM again. Too many options blah!
OK - it was the documentation on the HA website that talks about an i3 being good for running Home assistant only, and the i5 or i7 recommended for running multiple environments.
I also want to setup a number of things down the road. Thanks for your time!
I’m surprised to hear you say that because you asked had me a very similar question and I replied here:
The link I provided you to the Add-Ons repository includes Plex Media server and many others including motionEye (CCTV and NVR).
If you do not find the Add-On you want, but it exists somewhere as a Docker container, you are able to install the Portainer Add-On and then use it to install the desired Docker container. So you have all the flexibility you desire without the complexity of using a VM or the uncertainty of using the ‘Supervised/generic linux’ version.
I had also recommended you use Home Assistant’s Intel NUC image because you already have an Intel NUC and this is an officially supported installation (and likely to remain that way). You have everything you need to produce a supported, flexible installation.
Hello Taras,
Thank you for all your help if I have not said that. I think I replied to Kanga about the camera before I read your post about the repositories - which is infinitely useful.
I am going back and forth with the install method because I was also thinking about using the NUC for things other than home assistant down the road. The choices are enough to make my head explode.
Although it is highly likely that I will have to at some point anyways - I am trying to avoid setting up Home Assistant and then having to reinstall and setup everything again because I changed my mind about how I want to approach the whole thing.
Docker or VM is perfect for this mentality. You don’t have to worry about messing up the host system with unnecessary crap. You just change from Docker to VM or VM to Docker, or whatever…the configuration is all there in a directory…portable between different installation methods.