I already bought a small computer; I am a windows person. The computer comes with windows 10 installed. What version is the best to install the Home Assistant on it?
HA only runs on W10 using a virtual machine, as it run under Linux and not Windows…
For virtual machine in windows you have several options:
- Natively, W10 supports HyperV, but there will be no support for usb devices.
- VitualBox is a good candidate and comes for free.
- VMware i guess is the best, but is not free…
You could also use if via a Docker-Container, I am aware this not always suits everyone but is easy to install and maintain. Docker is installed easily (search the web) and the HA part is widely documented too.
But windows docker doesn’t do network=host.
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It’s a kind of waste of resources that you load a desktop OS to use desktop virtualization to run Home Assistant. (to be clear, I’m also using W10 on my desktop & laptop)
Maybe it might be better in the end to ditch that Windows and go for another type of installation since even on windows, you will not use it at all for HA.
Just my 2c.