Have you considered not using the Home Assistant OS? You don’t need to run it to use Home Assistant. You can instead set your host up with some other OS, like Debian, and then run Home Assistant in a docker container (or containers, plural) and run any other containers you want.

I’m not doing this myself so can’t speak to its limitations, but from what I’ve heard, if you’re familiar with Docker then it’s pretty straightforward.

A lot of apps use hard coded paths, so using a subdomain per app makes it much easier to use them all. Traefik has middleware, including stripPrefix, which allow you to strip a path prefix before forwarding the path to the app, though - have you tried that approach?

it now primarily has alt-right, conspiracy and terrorist uses.

Assuming you meant “users” - I highly doubt that the users you described are even a large minority of Telegram’s user base. They’re highly publicized but that’s it.

Telegram is just a tool. How is saying “don’t use it because terrorists use it” different from saying “don’t use a screwdriver because terrorists use screwdrivers.”

Telegram isn’t a secure messenger like Signal, Matrix, the others you mentioned, or other e2ee options out there. It has an extremely limited secure mode that is useful if you need to have a one-off conversation, but that’s it. But if you don’t need a secure messenger and instead want something to replace Twitter, Discord, other social media, or to serve some other purpose, then it’s fine for that.

founder is sketchy

I’m not familiar with the folks associated with the other apps you mentioned, but Signal’s former CEO and co-founder, Moxie, is a pretty dubious character, too. Signal is anti-FOSS: you can’t use their servers if you fork the client; they won’t federate if you host your own servers; they’re opposed to being on F-Droid or even providing reproducible builds; and they have a history of failing to update their repos in a timely manner, to the point that clients built from source couldn’t even connect to their servers.

That all said, I still use and recommend Signal.

In the US, if you don’t proceed to step 3, step 2 is legal (so long as the CD lacks DRM). You’re permitted a single backup under fair use; you’re also permitted to rip the music for personal use, like loading it onto a music player. You’re not supposed to burn it to a regular CD-R (is it illegal? Idk), but burning it to an Audio CD-R (where there is a tax that is distributed to rights holders like royalties) is endorsed by the RIAA.

You have an idea of what you’re buying and you know what you have once you’ve shucked it. The worst case scenario is that it’s not what you expected, isn’t suited for that use case, you can’t find another use for it, and you can’t return it… but it’s not like anyone is forcing you to add an unsuitable drive to your setup.

I don’t think you understood the context of the comment you replied to. As a reply to “Here are all these drawbacks to Docker vs hosting on bare metal,” it makes perfect sense to point out that the risks are there regardless.

Unless I misread your comment and you’re suggesting that you think devs not having to deal with OS-specific code is a disadvantage of Docker. Or maybe you meant your second paragraph to be directed at OP?