HoustonBOFHB
If I had it to do over, I would put 2 Ethernet drops on every wall of living space but the bathrooms. And pull strings in every drop. (Conduit to hard ones) You will want a “computer room” for the network stuff, but also NAS, DVR, smart home hub, and more as the needs grow. Dedicated circuit an a place to mound a business class rack mount UPS. (2200 or better) And speaking of power, you should add more than you need. And leave room for monitoring it in the box. If your panel is in the garage, a shelf for another switch may be handy. I have a switch in my house, my detached garage, and my shed…
Matter, Zigbee and Zwave are all local control. And on Home Assistant, you can have a dongle for all three. That will open your options quite a bit.
Depends on your tolerance for tinkering. If you love to tinker, Homesassistant is by far the most versatile. And can be totally local. On the other hand, if you do not want to tinker, Apple Homekit can also be (Mostly) local, and is much easier to set up. Google is not something I would trust. They have a history of shady behavior. Amazon less so, but when the internet is down, so is your house!
This… It is ease vs control. If you have needs inside the box Proxmox has planned for, it is very easy. But if you want to step outside that box, you are in for a world of surprise. I install Proxmox for clients that do not have solid Linux chops. I run KVM/libvirt on my own stuff. And if you need a web front end, oVirt exists…
I used to be all white box, and now I am all business class cast offs… If I lose a motherboard I can get one on ebay or a complete system for next to nothing if it is common like Dell. And now I just treat the boxes like cattle rather than pets. One dies and I move the hard drive to a new one.
I wouldn’t recommend it to my friends, maybe techie friends, but it is so hard to configure.
I hear ya, but some of the new stuff is worse! It will get better, but then there is the next hurdle; stability. Zoneminder can run for months with no baby sitting… Other stuff, not so much. But I keep watching, and hoping!