Are the 17.0 release notes correct?

[jj-uk]

They note that 32-support is dropped for RPI 3 and 4 but these boards use the Armv8 architecture and are therefore 64-bit ?

The announcement (https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2025/05/22/deprecating-core-and-supervised-installation-methods-and-32-bit-systems/) notes this correctly - armv7 is 32-bit and only the RPI2 model B uses it afaik (excluding PI zero)

[LeSpocky]

It is possible to build and run 32bit images for RPi3/4. Not sure but maybe there were both 32bit and 64bit images in the past, and now there are only 64bit images?

[LeSpocky]

Yeah, I was right, that's what was done. See 16.3 release for example, there are haos_rpi3-64 and haos_rpi3 images, same for rpi4, while rpi5 was 64bit only already. So in the past you had the choice to use 32bit or 64bit und rpi3 and rpi4, now it's 64bit only.

(FWIW: from a memory point of view that made sense on rpi3 with 1GB of RAM only, in my setup it was stable with just below 1GB of RAM and becoming unstable/unusable on 64bit. After migrating to rpi4 with more RAM, I could see the 64bit image needs slightly more than 1GB of memory with my integrations and add-ons. The same software needs more memory on 64bit. Not a problem with 4GB or more though.)

[sairon]

Indeed, rpi3 and rpi4 targets were 32-bit builds, there are still rpi3-64 and rpi4-64 images available. It should be possible to migrate by performing a full system backup and restoring it on a respective fresh 64-bit install. And you're also right that 64-bit has slightly larger overhead, but if memory concern was the reason to run on 32-bit, there was always the OOM killer waiting around the corner to bite you :)

[RadioactiveMan56]

Same question here. My old RPI3 works fine, pity to have to throw it out.

[LeSpocky]

Maybe you don't have to. Make a full backup through HA backup function. Download that to your computer. Install a fresh 64bit HAOS to your SD card. On first use restore from your backup. If you're not using Add-Ons it could work with only 1GB of RAM. Would try that first before migrating to new hardware. That's what exactly what I did. Went from RPi2 32bit to RPi3 64bit with that backup/installation/restore procedure and that procedure was absolutely flawless. (Had to replace the RPi3 later anyways, because memory was too small for my usecase, but you should try it first, your set of integrations/addons might be different and it could fit.)

[RadioactiveMan56]

Indeed, upgraded this morning, works fine. Memory usage has not increased, is around 70%.

[Hedda]

32-support is dropped for RPI 3 and 4 but these boards use the Armv8 architecture and are therefore 64-bit ?

As mentioned, if you have installed 32-bit variant of HAOS on ARMv8 HW then just do a full backup to external storage, then reinstall HAOS 64-bit variant from scratch on the same hardware and finally to a restore from backup. This was announced and described in blog(s) here:

• https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2025/05/22/deprecating-core-and-supervised-installation-methods-and-32-bit-systems

Just for the record, it is only the original Raspberry Pi, the original Raspberry Pi Zero, and Raspberry Pi 2 that have 32-bit only CPUs.

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, Raspberry Pi 3, Raspberry Pi 4, Raspberry Pi 5, and all Raspberry Pi Compute models have 64-bit capable processors, however it is/was very common that people installed a 32-bit operating-system on those because those distrubutions was more popular and before 64-bit OSs matured to what they are today.

So again a tip if you are using hardware that actually also supports 64-bit but is currently running a 32-bit operatingsystem is to reinstall.

You might also consider the relativly low individual cost of upgrading old hardware if needed and then consider development time that developoers need to spend maintaining 32-bit hardware is which now generally considered obsolete by most Linux OS distrobutions or at least not worth spending time to activly maintain.

FYI, runing a 64-bit OS generally offer better performance and allow it to draw less power, thus more or less having more benefits.

Again, be aware that Home Assistant (who is governed by the Open Home Foundation) has recently officially deprecated 32-bit systems for Home Assistant. Hence think there is practically no chance now that official effort from the OHF will be done to restore official 32-bit support formally:

• https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2025/05/22/deprecating-core-and-supervised-installation-methods-and-32-bit-systems/

[MEKadan]

Yeah, I by some mistake originally installed 32-bit version on my Rpi4 and ran it a long time. I noticed it only quite some time later. I backed everything up, installed 64 bit version and restored the backup. No problems, everything was working like before.