I’ve been slowly making my way into the smart home ecosystem and was incredibly concerned about these not because of paperweight necessarily but because of needing to send data to a company over the internet which might not be available when it’s needed.

So I ended up going with Home Assistant and I’m really happy about the launch of the Works with Home Assistant program with the logo on devices.

Have a look at meshtastic. Yes, you do have to get a separate device, but range on it can be several tens to hundreds of miles depending on the mesh density.

I don’t have a significant need to use a laptop or desktop as my phone is my primary computing device. With that said, I run Mint Debian Edition on my laptop. Just because I want my computer to work when I go to use it, even if it has been six months.