I am glad home assistant (HA) gets some exposure. I run it in a VM on a proxmox server (because I use it for other stuff), it works like a charm. If you only need HA buy the dedicated hardware they sell or buy a mini PC. For my lights and switches (via the wall module), I am 100% Philips hue which is expensive but make the best smart lights money can buy and works as expected locally even if the internet or my HA server were to go down. Beware the rabbit hole of home automation though