Blog post for Home Assistant release 8 (#22711)

* Blog post for Home Assistant release 8

* Add OS8 social image/move images to separate dir

* Small tweaks

* Apply suggestions from code review

* Add note that this is technical and people need not to worry about

* Update source/_posts/2022-05-16-home-assistant-os-release-8.markdown

Co-authored-by: Franck Nijhof <frenck@frenck.nl>

source/_posts/2022-05-16-home-assistant-os-release-8.markdown

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+---
+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
+---
+
+<a href='https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/tag/8.0'>
+<img title='Home Assistant OS Release 8' alt='Home Assistant OS Release 8 Logo'
+     src='/images/blog/2022-05-16-os8/social.png' style='border: 0;box-shadow: none;'>
+</a>
+
+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. 🤞
+
+<img src='/images/blog/2022-05-16-os8/haos-grub2-menu.png' alt='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