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Debating between Home Assistant OS or Docker for Raspberry Pi 4
(discuss.tchncs.de)
Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io
Running it on a bare Pi, HAOS, imho you get the most performance, and support if it goes wrong.
Running on more powerful hardware (x64 host), VM all the way. It's so much easier when you can snapshot, move VMs around, and split out components when needed.