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Comment by fierro | Hacker News Reader

Reading about this home-assistant thing -- why do you need an OS dedicated to the "home automation" use case? Isn't home automation simply an application level use case? Hard for me to see why we'd want a new OS/kernel for this.

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They provide a number of installation options; you don't need to use the dedicated OS.

https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/

It's a linux distro that's been setup to simplify managing the updates, backups, and configuring the application. It's running all the bits inside docker containers.

It's not an OS, it's software. I run it in a container. You can run their prefab OS if you want, but I do not.

I'm running the virtual image because for some reason the addon repository doesn't support containers.

For what should just be a simple Python script and a Zigbee stick+driver, is for some reason this eldritch monstrosity (albeit with a nice interface).

You can set up the various addons as just separate containers; this is what I do for esphome, deconz, etc.

I use the OS variant because to me it it's an appliance. I run it on a separate piece of hardware and it does one thing: control my home automation stuff.

I don't want to explain to my SO why the lights aren't turning on because I'm messing with a "apt upgrade" gone wrong.

You don't need it, but it has a lot of little things that you wouldn't implement but since you have them you use.

Much like using a RTOS in the embedded space. It's an option with a lot of overhead, but on the other side of that overhead, you get a large number of features for free that you don't quite need but might as well use.

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