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Nice to see HA getting some love on HN. A colleague recommended it to me about 3 years ago as an alternative to Domoticz. I've migrated back than and haven't lo

Nice to see HA getting some love on HN. A colleague recommended it to me about 3 years ago as an alternative to Domoticz. I've migrated back than and haven't looked back since. I consider myself a real Home Assistant enthousiast. I've contributed some small amounts to the project, created and maintain my own add-ons and love to share my configuration with others. Although most of the things currently just work, especially with the (migrated) UI integrations. Some things still feel very unfinished, like blueprints. Which was a terrific idea, but maintaining and keeping those up to date is an absolute nightmare and you will have to that yourself [1]. Same with battery powered devices. When they work, it's all great, but having to watch their battery level is just a hassle. You can create your own automation to do that for you, but it seems unnecessary. For me the community also sometimes feels very hostile. For instance, you can have a Portainer add-on, but installing other Docker images makes your system 'unsupported'. Same with some blacklisted images [2], which break Home Assistant Supervisor. Or when the maintainer of one of the add-ons completely ignores a breaking issue after a day [3]. 1. https://community.home-assistant.io/t/reload-automations-automatically-when-a-blueprint-is-changed/253977 https://community.home-assistant.io/t/reload-automations-aut... 2. https://github.com/home-assistant/supervisor/blob/main/supervisor/resolution/evaluations/container.py#L15-L18 https://github.com/home-assistant/supervisor/blob/main/super... 3. https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-adguard-home/issues/195 https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-adguard-home/issues/1...

Denvercoder9 5y ago
If you want to do anything more than just run Home Assistant with the system it's on, I recommend ditching their whole OS and Supervisor, and just running HA Core in a virtualenv. The developers have shown that they're very opinionated about how their software should be used, and they're hostile to everything that falls outside of that. That makes their OS totally unusable as a general-purpose solution. Besides, it's an OS that doesn't get regular security updates, so that alone should disqualify it from serious use.
- Gatsky 5y ago
  Well their approach allows them to deliver software that works without being inundated by issues related to someone’s peculiar set up. I don’t think ‘hostile’ is a very fair assessment.
  - Denvercoder9 5y ago
    I totally understand that they don't want to support peculiar setups, and I get why non-standard setups are labeled as unsupported. But actively asking for your software to not be packaged, even under another name, and threatening to change the license to prevent that [0], is a whole other ballgame, and I do consider that hostile. Hopefully this was just an extreme outlier, but the desire to not have people use it in ways the developers don't like, even if they aren't being bothered with it, seeps through in a lot of their work. Of course it's their right to steer their project and decide what you can and cannot do with their software, but it does make Home Assistant significantly less attractive for lots of people that don't agree with all their choices (and judging by the mixed feedback in this thread, that's not a negligible group). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27505277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27505277
    - kop316 5y ago
      FWIW, I am in the same camp as you. They seem oddly hostile to FOSS development (as shown in your comment and the top comment you replied to), and as such, I hesitate to use it for that reason.
    - spacemanmatt 5y ago
      I also found the user/support community hostile.
    - Gatsky 5y ago
      Well I see your point... but I just want to automate a few lights and blinds, and this stuff seems totally peripheral to that.
- dzikimarian 5y ago
  +1 to that - HASS is nice option if you don't want to host anything else on this device and/or really want add-ons and in-gui upgrades. For me it was giving up too much control over the device. I'm running plain docker image for over a year now with zero issues. Upgrade is done by simple bash script, functionality offered by add-ons can be achieved by manual installation as add-ons are simply wrappers for various software. Anyway HA is awesome. Highly recommend it.

Denvercoder9 5y ago

If you want to do anything more than just run Home Assistant with the system it's on, I recommend ditching their whole OS and Supervisor, and just running HA Core in a virtualenv. The developers have shown that they're very opinionated about how their software should be used, and they're hostile to everything that falls outside of that. That makes their OS totally unusable as a general-purpose solution. Besides, it's an OS that doesn't get regular security updates, so that alone should disqualify it from serious use.

Gatsky 5y ago
Well their approach allows them to deliver software that works without being inundated by issues related to someone’s peculiar set up. I don’t think ‘hostile’ is a very fair assessment.
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  I totally understand that they don't want to support peculiar setups, and I get why non-standard setups are labeled as unsupported. But actively asking for your software to not be packaged, even under another name, and threatening to change the license to prevent that [0], is a whole other ballgame, and I do consider that hostile. Hopefully this was just an extreme outlier, but the desire to not have people use it in ways the developers don't like, even if they aren't being bothered with it, seeps through in a lot of their work. Of course it's their right to steer their project and decide what you can and cannot do with their software, but it does make Home Assistant significantly less attractive for lots of people that don't agree with all their choices (and judging by the mixed feedback in this thread, that's not a negligible group). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27505277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27505277
  - kop316 5y ago
    FWIW, I am in the same camp as you. They seem oddly hostile to FOSS development (as shown in your comment and the top comment you replied to), and as such, I hesitate to use it for that reason.
  - spacemanmatt 5y ago
    I also found the user/support community hostile.
  - Gatsky 5y ago
    Well I see your point... but I just want to automate a few lights and blinds, and this stuff seems totally peripheral to that.
dzikimarian 5y ago
+1 to that - HASS is nice option if you don't want to host anything else on this device and/or really want add-ons and in-gui upgrades. For me it was giving up too much control over the device. I'm running plain docker image for over a year now with zero issues. Upgrade is done by simple bash script, functionality offered by add-ons can be achieved by manual installation as add-ons are simply wrappers for various software. Anyway HA is awesome. Highly recommend it.