zlacker

This is probably for an audience less enamoured with the Pi than the HN crowd. Someone that's more interested in getting to a working result than having to yak shave for a couple days or more to do the same.

For someone who doesn't have a Linux background, "just put it on a Raspberry Pi" is kind of like saying "You write a distributed map reduce function in Erlang". Ie: it's easy if they know it, but if they don't then that "just" is doing a lot of work there.

Pre-installed is almost certainly the way to go for such a person.

>>switch+(OP)
As reasonable as that is, the starting point for this is a person that wants to install smart switches and other home automations.

This is already a job that requires fairly decent electrical knowledge, especially if there are 3-way switches involved.

Turn-key solutions exist for people that don't want to deal with the complexity.

>>switch+(OP)
When it comes to Home Assistant, the Pi is actually a much more pragmatic option.

It works out of the box, is very easy to source (hell some brick & mortar stores sell them), has very good Linux support due to its popularity, and makes up a large part of the install base meaning HA support for it is unlikely to get deprecated.

>>Nextgr+Hb
Right, but the fact that running it on a Pi with Linux is the "much more pragmatic solution" is already ruling out about 90% of the US.

>>Nextgr+Hb
> is very easy to source

I was with you until this point. A Pi hasn't been easy to source for almost 4 years now.

>>SamBam+pF
Keep in mind that Home Assistant provides ready-made images that behave like an appliance and can auto-update. In fact, it doesn't even give you a shell/SSH by default and such access is discouraged.

Thus the Linux/RaspberryPi underlying complexity is irrelevant to the user - the "complexity" is to dd/BalenaEtcher/etc a downloaded file to an SD card, put the card in the Pi and connect it to power. From there it's available over the network and can be configured through a web browser.