[ingenium]

They release pretty frequent updates (monthly), with features added in most of them. It honestly doesn't really make sense to package it with the distro. Home Assistant 1 year ago was missing a lot of nice features in the present version. Plus fixes for integrations that stopped working reliably due to API changes (Ecobee comes to mind), etc.

The best/easiest way to run it is to use Docker. They have a script that will set it up for you. After that, the container can basically self update and self manage. Any addons that you want to use are installed as separate docker containers that talk to the main home assistant container. It's super seamless and easy.

In my case, I just setup a barebones Debian VM and ran their setup script. It took care of all the Docker stuff and got it up and running.

[traverseda]

I think being in control of your device's update cycle is pretty important if you're relying on that device for anything. I want to be able to leave my home-automation controller alone for years without maintenance, and no matter how good their release cycle management is this fighting over distro packaging is a bit of a red flag.