Add Home Assistant OS 6 release blog post (#18137)

Co-authored-by: Jesse Hills <3060199+jesserockz@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Franck Nijhof <frenck@frenck.nl>
Co-authored-by: Joakim Sørensen <hi@ludeeus.dev>

source/_posts/2021-06-09-home-assistant-os-release-6.markdown

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Home Assistant OS Release 6"
+description: ""
+date: 2021-06-11 00:00:00
+date_formatted: "June 11, 2021"
+author: Stefan Agner
+author_twitter: falstaff_ch
+comments: true
+categories: Release-Notes
+og_image: /images/blog/2021-06-11-os6/social.png
+---
+
+<a href='https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/tag/6.0'>
+<img title='Home Assistant OS Release 6' alt='Home Assistant OS Release 6 Logo'
+     src='/images/blog/2021-06-11-os6/social.png' style='border: 0;box-shadow: none;'>
+</a>
+
+Home Assistant OS 6.0 stable is available now!
+
+**Highlights**:
+
+- OS Agent for better OS integration with Supervisor
+- Support for additional Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices
+- Smaller virtual machine disk images
+
+- Improved: Generic x86-64 system support
+
+## Table of contents
+
+- [Operating System Changes](#operating-system-changes)
+  - [OS Agent](#os-agent)
+  - [Under the Hood](#under-the-hood)
+- [Device Support](#device-support)
+  - [Raspberry Pi](#raspberry-pi)
+  - [Generic x86-64](#generic-x86-64)
+  - [Open Virtualization Appliance](#open-virtualization-appliance)
+  - [Additional Wi-Fi and Bluetooth device support](#additional-wifi-and-bluetooth-device-support)
+  - [Homematic IP Support](#homematic-ip-support)
+  - [Google Coral PCIe AI Accelerator Support](#google-coral-pcie-ai-accelerator-support)
+- [Other Changes](#other-changes)
+
+## Operating System Changes
+
+### OS Agent
+
+Operating System release 6 comes with a new, Go written daemon called OS Agent.
+This allows the Supervisor to access more aspects of the OS. One such aspect is
+to move the data to an external data disk or wipe data to start over without
+reinstalling. Note however that at this point, the required logic in the
+Supervisor and Frontend is still being developed.
+
+### Under the Hood
+
+Under the hood, the OS was updated to the latest upstream Linux 5.10 kernel
+as well as Buildroot 2021.02.1. The latest Buildroot release brings tons of
+new software versions along with bug and security fixes. Some key components
+which received an update were systemd 247 and the Docker Container Engine
+20.10.6.
+
+### Other Changes
+
+- The short name of the OS used throughout the software stack was renamed to
+  "haos". From a users perspective not much changes, but it leads to new file
+  names.
+- The Home Assistant CLI is now started on tty1 instead of the login prompt. The
+  HA CLI banner shows the IP and other device information without the need
+  to attach a keyboard to login.
+- The default shell of the root user is now the Busybox ash. This allows to use
+  scp and similar tools using SSH.
+- The system start is now delayed until the system time has been synchronized
+  with an NTP server. This avoids connection issues to SSL/TLS enabled servers
+  when the system time is off. In practice, the delay should only be a few
+  seconds. The system proceeds with startup after 90s in case the NTP server was
+  not reachable (e.g. if no Internet connectivity is available).
+
+## Device Support
+
+### Raspberry Pi
+
+All Raspberry Pi versions were updated to use the Linux Kernel 5.10 from the
+Raspberry Pi team, just like Raspberry Pi OS. The latest Bluetooth firmware for
+CYW43455 (Raspberry Pi 3 B+/4) with security fixes is now part of the Raspberry
+Pi images.
+
+### Generic x86-64
+
+In Home Assistant OS 6 the board/image "Intel NUC" was renamed to "Generic
+x86-64". Existing "Intel NUC" installation will automatically migrate to the
+"Generic x86-64" image on update.
+
+Already with OS 5 the "Intel NUC" image was usable for most UEFI capable x86-64
+systems. With the rename that fact is emphasized. Home Assistant OS is open
+to changes to add drivers to extend support for other x86-64 platforms. However,
+keep in mind that we don't have access to all x86-64 hardware, so support for
+devices is on a best effort basis.
+
+Other Changes:
+
+- The Intel IGC network driver supports Intel network cards such as I225-LM/I225-V
+  used on some newer Intel NUC devices.
+
+- With Home Assistant OS 6 the latest version of the Barebox bootloader 2021.05.0
+  which fixes boot from hard disks larger than 2TB.
+
+- The ACPI kernel driver for Thinkpad devices is enabled.
+
+### Open Virtualization Appliance
+
+The virtual disk images are now built from a sparse file as source, which leads
+to smaller effective disk image sizes. Disk images are now also distributed in
+the more common zip file format (except the qcow2 images which are mostly used on
+Linux, they continue to be in the xz compression format).
+
+By default, the image now has a serial console enabled which is useful to access
+Home Assistant OS on headless host systems.
+
+### Additional Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Device Support
+
+Ralink rt27xx/rt28xx/rt30xx, as well as Realtek 87xx/88xx devices, are now
+supported on boards that don't have onboard Wi-Fi/Bluetooth. This is also
+true for the OVA image for virtualized environments (when using hardware
+passthrough functionality). For the OVA image, also Intel firmwares are now
+part of the image so that Intel Wi-Fi/Bluetooth devices can be used in
+passthrough mode as well.
+
+### Homematic IP Support
+
+[@jens-maus] contributed OS support for Homematic/Homematic IP dual-stack support
+for RPI-RF-MOD or HM-MOD-RPI-PCB devices. This together with the
+[RaspberryMatic CCU Add-On](https://github.com/jens-maus/RaspberryMatic/wiki/Installation-HomeAssistant)
+offers the full functionality of RaspberryMatic embedded in Home Assistant.
+
+### Google Coral PCIe AI Accelerator Support
+
+[@ryddler] enabled the driver for Google Coral PCIe TPU devices. This allows to
+use Google Coral Mini PCIe Accelerator or M.2 Accelerator on all boards
+supporting PCIe.
+
+
+That's all Folks! Now go out and update!
+
+[@jens-maus]: https://github.com/jens-maus
+[@ryddler]: https://github.com/ryddler