I wholeheartedly agree with you. This is one of the most bizarre arguments against it that I've ever come across.

And that's even before you realise it's based on fiction:

> Home Assistant Operating System is not based on a regular Linux distribution like Ubuntu.

https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system

There is no apt or any other package manager on HAOS.

Yes, you are right. There is one more abstraction layer.

Home Assistant Operating System uses Buildroot which uses Docker to run container with Home Assistant Supervisor. And only that container is Debian-based [0].

[0] https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/blob/0c75...

And that's entirely inconsequential, since it's in an immutable container where `apt` will never be used.

I just installed python3 on Debian and Alpine. It takes 16s vs 4s (I ran the test three times, and kept the fastest measurement for Debian and the slowest measurement for Alpine).

Sure a one-time wait of 12s doesn't change my life. But I won't use apt/apk _once_; I'll use it every single time that I install something. It low-key bothers me when my flow is interrupted by having to wait for machines to do their job, increasing that by 300% doesn't help.

This wouldn't be a deciding factor for me. But it doesn't add points for the Debian-based approach.

A couple weeks ago I powered a laptop that had been sitting unused for several months. It had Ubuntu 22.04 installed. The initial `apt-get update` took some time to download new indexes, and almost 3 minutes to process them all afterwards, while I was right there staring at the screen wondering why I was there staring at the screen for so long, because this experience always happens as soon as any of my machines stay off for more than a couple weeks. apt is indeed very slow.

> Do people really care

I suppose it depends. I do care because I typically need to do it regularly. And it is nice to have it done quickly.