diff --git a/source/_posts/2022-05-16-home-assistant-os-release-8.markdown b/source/_posts/2022-05-16-home-assistant-os-release-8.markdown new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..9f419782b94 --- /dev/null +++ b/source/_posts/2022-05-16-home-assistant-os-release-8.markdown @@ -0,0 +1,123 @@ +--- +layout: post +title: "Home Assistant OS Release 8" +description: "Now using GRUB2 for UEFI-based systems, Home Assistant Yellow support, and support for UEFI-based AArch64 systems!" +date: 2022-05-16 00:00:00 +date_formatted: "May 16, 2022" +author: Stefan Agner +author_twitter: falstaff_ch +comments: true +categories: Release-Notes +og_image: /images/blog/2022-05-16-os8/social.png +--- + + +Home Assistant OS Release 8 Logo + + +Home Assistant OS 8.0 stable is available now! + +**Highlights**: + +- Use of GRUB2 for UEFI based systems +- Support for additional Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices +- New image: Generic AArch64 for UEFI based AArch64 VMs and boards +- New image: Home Assistant Yellow + +For existing installations, no manual intervention is needed! You can safely +update without reading these rather technical release notes. + +## Table of contents + +- [Table of contents](#table-of-contents) +- [Operating System Changes](#operating-system-changes) + - [GRUB2 for UEFI based systems](#grub2-for-uefi-based-systems) + - [Under the Hood](#under-the-hood) + - [Other Changes](#other-changes) +- [Device Support](#device-support) + - [Raspberry Pi](#raspberry-pi) + - [Home Assistant Yellow](#home-assistant-yellow) + - [Generic x86-64](#generic-x86-64) + - [Generic AArch64 support](#generic-aarch64-support) + +## Operating System Changes + +### GRUB2 for UEFI based systems + +For Generic x86-64, OVA and the new Generic AArch64 Home Assistant uses GRUB2 +as boot loader now. GRUB2 (GRand Unified Bootloader) is the de-facto standard +boot loader used by most Linux distributions. The main reason for switching from +Barebox to GRUB2 was the missing AArch64 UEFI boot support in Barebox. We also +expect GRUB2 to be more stable especially on Desktop style x86-64 systems as +it gets used by much more users since generic Linux distributions use GRUB2. +Although, we actually hit a bug in GRUB2 during the RC phase, let's hope +this was a one-off. 🤞 + +Screenshot showing GRUB2 menu of Home Assistant OS + +The boot menu shows the two boot slots. Typically you don't have to change +selection here, unless you intentionally want to boot the previously installed +Home Assistant OS version. + +Note: Upgrading from any version 7.x is safe, but we recommend upgrading from +the last version of the previous major release. This is also the best tested +upgrade path. From any release with GRUB2 it is only safe to downgrade to 7.6! +Downgrading to releases before 7.6 can be done by downgrading to 7.6 first. + +### Under the Hood + +Under the hood, the OS was updated to the latest upstream Linux 5.15 kernel +as well as Buildroot 2022.02.1. The latest Buildroot release brings new +versions of various core components like systemd 250, NetworkManager 1.34.0 +and Docker 20.10.14. + +Additional networking drivers and settings prepare Home Assistant OS to +host the [OpenThread Border Router add-on]. + +### Other Changes + +- IP set support for advanced firewalling (also used by the OTBR add-on). +- Support for NTP configuration via DHCP. +- Google Coral support is now using Google's latest driver. This enables + additional Coral device support such as PCI Dual Edge TPU. +- Legacy wext backend for wpa_suppilcant is now enabled to support more Wi-Fi + devices. + +## Device Support + +### Raspberry Pi + +All Raspberry Pi versions use the latest LTS Linux Kernel 5.15 and firmware +(tag 1.20220331) from the Raspberry Pi team. These are the same versions as +the Raspberry Pi OS is using currently. + +### Home Assistant Yellow + +This is the first release that supports Home Assistant Yellow. Since Home +Assistant Yellow uses the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, the support is +based on the regular Raspberry Pi support currently. The Yellow image is +using the same kernel and firmware version. The Yellow board also supports +booting directly off of an NVMe device for those using a CM4 Lite (without +eMMC storage). + +### Generic x86-64 + +Besides the move to GRUB2 Generic x86-64 received quite some additional device +support. The Wi-Fi devices 3945ABG/BG/4965AGN and 22000 series are now supported. + +Other Changes: + +- Support 32-bit UEFI boot. This is required by older Intel Atom systems. Note + that only the boot loader is 32-bit, everything else uses the same 64-bit + binaries as 64-bit UEFI boot. +- Driver and firmware for Broadcom BNX2/BNX2X network interfaces are included. + +### Generic AArch64 support + +[@Doridian] contributed support for generic AArch64 systems which use the UEFI +boot flow. It should support real boards as well as virtual machines. So far +it has been successfully tested on KVM Virtual Machines. + +[@Doridian]: https://github.com/Doridian +[OpenThread Border Router add-on]: https://github.com/home-assistant/addons-development/tree/master/openthread_border_router diff --git a/source/images/blog/2022-05-16-os8/haos-grub2-menu.png b/source/images/blog/2022-05-16-os8/haos-grub2-menu.png new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..560f1ddb8ee Binary files /dev/null and b/source/images/blog/2022-05-16-os8/haos-grub2-menu.png differ diff --git a/source/images/blog/2022-05-16-os8/social.png b/source/images/blog/2022-05-16-os8/social.png new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..19498ad1f3c Binary files /dev/null and b/source/images/blog/2022-05-16-os8/social.png differ