Hope… there certainly is. I am very challenged to understand some of the previous design decisions made as they seem to all defy common sense. It’s a complete miracle that such a mess still is able to work the way it does and as often as it does and I would be stunned if they would be able to reproduce it. It’s literally a piece of art hanging by a shoe string and I feel sorry for the CS team for having to deal with it. I still remember all the hours I have spent banging my head with CS agents over the phone over some weird inclusion issues or automated forced firmware downgrades as I did not yet know as much about it as I do now. It’s an ingrate job.
Only two concerns I have about the linux firmware is that it is built backwards so it likely is going to take forever since they are working on the communication stacks now which should have been the first thing they should have done and completed 18months ago, they are likely going to have to redo everything they did in the past 18months to iron out and fix the bugs. Or they will release with bugs.
The second concern is for the large number of members here who have a fairly large system, the lack of migration path makes the new firmware irrelevant. From all the documentation released, the changes are so big that it is much easier to migrate to a competitor’s platform than to stay with vera since APIs, plugins, automation, device network will all need to change. It will be of consideration only for new setups.
The moment all of my Vera controllers die, I’m going back to regular light switches and traditional thermostat. Everything I do with Z-Wave is for fun and only exists because I’m a lazy ass.
… But you have so many of them Veras now!! 
If I have to manually migrate my whole setup for the Linux firmware I will not be returning to Vera. Probably will move to another controller
First one lasted seven years, so these will take me well into my dotage for sure.
I’m busy right now but I will explore zway+openluup. Thanks to @rafale77 and @akbooer this is a viable solution and will probably preserve my investment. I’m not that interested into the new generation of firmware, mainly because our feedback doesn’t seem to be considered and our bug reports are often ignored and if I have to commit to something, I prefer to go for a solution I can hack myself if needed.
I’m considering taking the same path, just worried about the learning curve
You can go slow… one step at a time. Though more complex and detailed, the interface is also more intuitive and your main interface shall remain ALTUI/OpenLuup. 
Absolutely! Lots of hand-holding help available… although, let’s be clear, that’s virtual hand-holding in the current circumstances. 
I’ll be heading in this direction as well, once I clear my plate of a few other experiments. And to that end, I will continue to ensure that any and all of my plugins that are viable on openLuup will continued to be fully supported and run well there.
I’ll prolly end up on HS4 seeing as I own a license for it.
I took a good hard look at HS3. Not sure how well HS4 will hold up. It was promising though not without its own quirks but at the end the relative ease of migration enabled by openLuup and @akbooer’s work on the bridge swung the decision.
I particularly liked that the HS license is not tied to hardware unlike zway. On the flip side, I did not like the heavy windows base and the cost.
I would most likely run the linux version if I did switch.
FYI, at least on HS3, the linux version is actually an emulated windows .NET build. That’s why some plugins don’t work as some instructions don’t get fully supported through Mono emulation… so it is still windows framework based.
Yuck! that sounds horrid! 
In that case I might give it a miss as I dont own the Windows version.
^^^
I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions until it becomes a RC.
They still have a long way to go, but their progress appears faster ( and in the right direction).
That’s why I said for HS3 for what I know.
That is true… ahh building software from the foundation up… It’s magic! 
They’re probably migrating to .NET Core, that’s cross platform and runs good on windows and Linux. My companion code is all written in C# and runs a similar platform. Performance are super and I like C# way more than lua. With that said, they come from VB, so porting is complicated. When done, you should be able to do what you want in any supported operating system. .NET Core supports arm23/64 too and is easily dockerized with Alpine. If I have to change platform, it’s probably where I’ll head. But as I said, I will first try to protect my investment and avoid to build a complex system from scratch.
The big plus here is they haven’t changed vision with new owners.
The knowledgeable user base IE guy’s like you…is much larger and they accept input.
I like the flexibility but proof will be in the delivery - I’m still waiting on the Zee2 HS4 release before I pass judgement.
When I first started my journey into Home Automation, I wanted an appliance that could be easily hackable. From my research, Vera seemed the best answer.
I didn’t wanted to hack things too much, since my wife could probably kill me if I left her in dark or things like that (since I travel 50%+ of my time and I live between two cities each at 800 km from the other - but that’s another story and I’m not sure I will continue this way after this COVID situation). But, with Vera, I ended up writing a lot of code to normalize its weirdness and quirks.
So, if I have to write code and have a system that’s not an appliance, maybe choosing my own components is a better choice. If complete compatibility and an easy transition path are on the plate, I’m more than happy to follow this route. My only blocker is that I invested too much into Nests thermostats, my wife likes it, the interior designer that’s in me can’t like other solutions - and I have probably to run a Vera just to have the plug-in running and bridged to openluup - at least until Nest sort things out and it’s out with a new API for integrations.
I’m also exploring a couple of ideas where I can add a C# module/application to openluup and have them integrated beyond HTTP. We’ll see.
I’ll take a look at the new Linux firmware because why not, but I’m not impressed at the moment. With all that said, I think this situation with Z-wave outstanding problems not fixed in the current firmware will force a lot of people go to different platform and never look back. If I was in the dev team, I’d have put more support into this, to keep the current user base loyal. To be honest, they tried this summer, but they’re now vanished, feedback is ignored and transparency has ceased, so we’re basically left behind - like before eZlo took over. Who could assure me that this will not happen again, let’s say, in 3 years with the new firmware?