4

I have an old macbook, that I don't use for anything. It sits on a shelf. It occurred to me that I could maybe run Home Assistant on it? But when I look at the install guide, and see they point to installing it in a vm, and I google it to see if there are native installs, but they all say "run it in a VM"

I don't need a VM, and am not sure if the old macbook could really run virtualization, as it is kind of slow - but this old macbook is better than a raspberry pi, I think.

Shouldn't it be able to run it natively?

EDIT: The macbook is a Macbook Retina 12inch, Early 2015, and it seems quite slow, and doesn't get updates (running Mojave, 10.14)

Brad Parks
  • 143
  • 4
  • 1
    You could just try running it in a VM and have your answer faster than you’re likely to get one here. Why are you so sure that you don’t need a VM? Also, “old MacBook” doesn’t mean much without specs. – romkey Mar 18 '24 at 16:35
  • @romkey the question is run "natively", not run "in a VM", so your suggestion isn't all that helpful... – FreeMan Mar 18 '24 at 16:51
  • You probably need to follow the Install Home Assistant Core instructions, though you’ll have to adapt them, the instructions on the macOS page use Linux tools. But it’s basically python stuff. – jcaron Mar 18 '24 at 21:49
  • Still, it may be easier to run as a VM. What MacBook model is it, and what macOS version is it running? – jcaron Mar 18 '24 at 21:50
  • Thanks for the feedback - I've added the macbook specs to the question! – Brad Parks Mar 19 '24 at 13:22
  • The biggest hurdle is probably the old version of macOS. Docker support for that version is deprecated, so you may have to install an older version. You could also try brew. The current cask requires a more recent macOS version as well, but here again you may be able to use an older one. – jcaron Mar 20 '24 at 21:26

1 Answers1

3

Yes you can. My suggestion is to use docker. Just install it on ur machine https://docs.docker.com/desktop/install/mac-install/ and then use docker to deploy Home Assistant https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/

offgrid8
  • 123
  • 6
  • 1
    Thanks for the suggestion, but my macbook is vey old, and barely runs, so running Docker on top of it may work, but another level of abstraction isn't needed, if I can help it! – Brad Parks Mar 23 '24 at 02:02
  • so if it is resources issue u can use lxd instead, containerization is better for portability and limits dependency problems especially for old hardware – offgrid8 Mar 25 '24 at 09:42