It is just a linux box to which you may add the python package of HA. For security reason it would be advisable to give the control to a different user, which might have the limited permissions to just start and manage HA. Commonly it is used systemd to run the command such as:
$ sudo systemctl start home-assistant@homeassistant_user.service
So that’s may come with the distro of one’s contents, I’m trying to set it up on a ALarm, but there are some difficulties regarding pyyaml ATM. Also my difficulty to make it run on a Asus TB. 