I'm aware of the tradeoffs here. For home assistant specifically, there's two options if you want to stay on the path of first-class support. Run it bare metal or in a VM.
Going a different path isn't a bad choice, or even a big downgrade.
I had fun with all the different ways of running home assistant 6+ years ago, and then decided to embrace a solution that required the least fuss and would hold up long term. I'm happy with my choice, and it gave me exactly what I was expecting.