Home Assistant has a great integration, ZHA, which “drives” the Zigbee device. So having the Zigbee dongle on the machine HA runs on is very common. In my case it’s a raspberry with a RaspBee dongle but every MINI PC will do. Recommended devices: www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#recommende…

The other common setup is using Zigbee2MQTT which allows different devices that communicate over LAN. it’s been the go to recommendation as it has some compatibility improvements for devices that don’t properly follow the Zigbee standard. ZHA is keeping up though and is natively supported by home assistant. I’m using ZHA and check for compatibility before buying devices.

You can theoretically switch later, but you’ll have to reconnect all devices which can be a hassle.