There are some notes specific to rpi installs, so give it a read if you run HAOS on that platform.
Raspberry Pi 5 users need a bootloader from at least 2025-02-12, otherwise the display output may freeze early during the boot. Update the bootloader before installing this update, using one of the following methods:
- Run
rpi-eeprom-update -awhile connected directly to the device (using a display and keyboard), prior to installing the OS update. - Use Raspberry Pi Imager with a spare SD card to flash a bootloader update image to it.
- Alternatively, if you have an SSH terminal app installed, you can run
ha os boards raspberrypi firmware updateover SSH right after updating the OS.
HAOS has more support for running additional add-ons/applications next to HA itself, on the same machine. In my case, that would be a Lenovo M710q Tiny loaded with an i7-7700T and 8GB RAM. Plenty of resources to spare for things like my Zigbee coordinator, NoLongerEvil (Nest thermostat), go2rtc (webcam shenanigans), Mosquitto broker (MQTT), Node-Red, Music Assistant, Aircast (for apple stuff), and other things.
TL;DR - It’s mostly personal preference. If you already have a bunch of containers running for home stuff, then by all means, run HA in Docker. But if you prefer the “all in one box” approach, go for HAOS. I don’t mind the “all in one box” approach, as long as it’s related to the core function of HA.
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If I don’t mind managing the extra dockers like the Zigbee coordinator through Portainer, would this all still be a similar experience? Or does hoas have deeper integration that is not similar through some docker manager alone?
It’s all in the UI basically. They have an app store of sorts where it’s managing the separate containers for you. If you already ate comfortable spinning up containers you don’t really gain much.
HAOS handles it a bit differently than standard Docker. Everything is managed within Home Assistant, including configuration (usually).