I was invited to test out the recently announced beta of HexOS, a NAS operating system that’s attempting to shake up the home server market with simplicity built on a modern, solid foundation. Here’s what I think about it.
Video notes:
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00:00 – What is HexOS?
01:35 – It is a Beta
01:56 – Installing HexOS
02:54 – Claiming your server
03:50 – Hardware detection
04:36 – Application & capabilities
05:15 – Virtualization
06:10 – Storage pools
07:27 – Finishing setup
08:40 – Welcome to HexOS
08:56 – Dashboard
09:54 – Network Settings
10:41 – Storage
11:40 – UI Settings
12:20 – Expanding your pool
13:11 – Installing Apps
15:07 – It’s still TrueNAS
16:04 – Installing other applications
18:32 – It’s more than just FOLDERS
19:10 – Public shares
20:06 – Managing users & shares
22:44 – Additional settings
23:30 – The future of HexOS?
26:51 – Who is this for?
Thank you for watching!
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Here are a few things that we unknown to me at the time of recording this:
– If you want to customize your apps in HexOS, you will soon be able to do this
– When checking TrueNAS, the pool that HexOS created was a 1 x RAIDZ1 | 6 wide
– There will be more options for configuring your drive pool in the future but will always recommend a sensible default
– If you only have 2 drives, it will create a mirror which is not expandable in the future, unlike RAID Z1
the 300$ is a total deal breaker. For the amount I save in using my own hardware I spend more for the OS than what I'd get for a Synology unit. A lifetime license for Unraid is cheaper than Hexos and unlike hexos it's not "just a truenas reskin".
HexOS is also trying to fill a weird spot. Anyone who doesn't have the tech know how to install an operating system from a USB drive would just get a Synology or Qnap unit and anyone who does have this knowledge would rather just google-fu their way through permissions than pay 300 bucks
I like how all of you reviewing this are not talking about CasaOS why HexOS when CasaOS
I'm giving the HexOS Team a shot and bought two licenses for the Black Friday/Cyber Monday price. Here's to hoping that HexOS 1.0 is robust enough for me to adopt it (I'm not touching any Alpha or Beta, I prefer my products to be good enough for my main homelab).
In the way that if I want to recommend something to someone and not need to support it myself, I suggest a synology unit. It’s not a budget solution, but it’s built to be simple. This is giving similar vibes (it’s not there yet) but with custom hardware, if you don’t want to pay the premium then you can figure out truenas yourself but that’s not the end user they are building it for.
Unraid has left the chat.
I'm going to stop you at having to log in with an online account. That's an instant deal-breaker. Nobody owns my computer, but me, myself and I! No, thank you!
If I were to install this over my current TrueNas Scale installation will it recognize the pools I have already created?
I have to buy Synology hardware you say? Laughs in Xpenology
i think you r assessment as to " who is this for" is quite accurate.
As an unraid user, i dont see myself moving away from unraid any time soon.
that procing is really not going to work, not against unraidwith years and years of support and reputation
Something to think about re:USB drives, while it's not usually recommended to use external USB drives as pool drives (think WD Easystores) some people, especially newcomers, probably want to set things up like this.
While I disagree that it should ignore by default, it should absolutely warn the user about the flakiness of USB connections.
HexOS announced the most expensive skin of 2025.
Do they really think this half baked skin should be bought?
If you have a proper product you might argue into it, but at this stage they should remove the pricing pages.
Also, you are building something but you constantly remind me that there's TrueNAS below?
Outrageus!
Every important feature "Coming Soon" is a no-go for a product requiring $99 or goddamn $299 with no way to trial the product
No one in the right mind will invest in this kind of product
$299 for just a TrueNAS skin ????
are you kidding me….
for $299 you can get a proper NAS chassis and be done
will be fully local too … no "Coming soon" local promises
I have used OMV, Unraid (Active) , TrueNAS (Active) and Synology
None of the paid software have asked me to wait for "future" to use the common features
Almost everything is "Coming Soon"
this is what you feel when you pre-order a game from EA
Not a product for me
I cant stop laughing at Linus blowing 250k on a beta truenas skin
BUYING???+ WTF… ZimaOS and CasaOS is totaly free and does the same…
Thank you for your review.
Yeah I'm sticking to TrueNas, I'm going to have to admit setting up NAS is bit of tedeous work, but for me is a thing that I only do once and walk away, specially cause is Free and its flawless
HexOS is everything I wanted for someone who's interested in tech and has an older but solid gaming computer that I've been wanting to turn into a NAS. However, after digging and concluding that TrueNAS would tick all my boxes, I became wildly overwhelmed by the amount of work required to make it all come to life. So I put it off. I only have so much time in a day, and I didn't want to lose myself in something that might become a new lifelong hobby. I just wanted to make a NAS with some extra features for my personal use case, and HexOS, assuming it's supported for years to come, will do just that.
I expect PC gamers with older rigs and basic technical knowledge are part of the long-term target market for HexOS. Not those that already know what a NAS is or how to set one up.
This would be great for my mom if I were to make her a server for my dads business
This is the OS for Hexenbiests
I bought the beta and don’t even have a place to put it yet lol! Thank you for this video!!!
TrueNAS is also backing it
how would this hold up compared to something like PROXMOX?
It's kinda nice to have different UI for TrueNAS, but I dont see myself purchasing a license for it. I'll stick with the regular TrueNAS
If it was $50 then sure! Dumbed down NAS software, I can see people giving it a go. For $300 its a hard pass. For that amount of money just put in the 2-3 hours extra needed to configure TrueNAS or get something like a Synology or Qnap where you get actual hardware with your investment.
what a dumb shit , sorry but that's how it looks … it's true that's in beta or whatever stage but still kind of shitty from the looks of it
I stopped watching when I saw it is paid. I didn't expect to see such videos in your channel my friend.
$300 is a joke, surely?
So this is basically an easy to use, Unraid style, GUI layer for TrueNAS? And they want $300 for it? You could just use Unraid for less, or better yet, learn TrueNAS!
Do you know of hexos would work on a rasberry pi or only x86 based computers?
for a paid application, I think the range of functions is relatively modest – even if it is currently only a beta). Truenas Scale is a great thing as a pure file server. If I want more (virtualization with applications or operating systems), I don't need another system, as there are already ready-made open source applications with marketplace applications (CasaOS, UmbrelOS etc.), I would use Cosmos Server if I had to, as it also has a reverse proxy (with Let's Encrypt support) integrated directly.
I love the idea of HexOS and I think it will be worth it in the future which is why I bought a perpetual license over Black Friday weekend. That being said, I'd like a local setup rather than cloud before I ever deploy it in my home. The whole point of my home server is to own my data and only upload self-encrypted data to the cloud. Great idea though
The audacity to sell roadmap promises coming from nowhere and providing as little as nothing for trustworthy background..
And for a such bald price and bussiness model that gives me flashbacks about notorious AAA games pre-orders from giant publishers.
Really sorry for those who fall for this.
P.S. 2:06 What's ESP doing in there?
It would be really cool if they end up offering a feature to lay HexOS over an existing TrueNAS install.
Definitely hard to justify the price when things like CasaOS exist. Hopefully they succeed, but to all my non technical friends, I just recommend they buy a Zima Board and it’s pretty much a turn key solution
I'm a web dev, and have tinkered with HomeAssistant, PiHole, Plex etc on Raspberry Pis before, but I've never gone down the "dedicated hardware" route for something like TrueNAS.
This sounds like it could be ideal for me. I know what I want, but don't have the time to dive into the weeds to set everything up individually. I think spending $99 could be worth the potential time saved here.
I am curious if there's any roadmap for application support… what are they prioritising? Like I say, I have no experience with TrueNAS so getting HexOS just to end up implementing it through TN anyway seems a bit pointless.
6x8TB raidz1 is not a very good recommendation from Hexos IMO. Resilvering a new drive in would really be rather risky. Raidz2 would be far safer for so many largish disks.
I do not get it. You say it is super for your non tech friends and brother(s). And I agree, on the surface it would be great for people like them. Just, how many times does a non tech friend come to you, and say "hey I just build me a NAS!". I do not think it has ever happened to me. They would have bought a Synology one or any other brand. And is that OS limited? For us, perhaps yes. For them? Probably not. So would you tell them then to purchase a 200 dollar license? I wouldn't. I cannot justify the price. the ease of use? If they cook me a nice dinner, I would happily set the NAS up for the them.
So who would buy it? I wouldn't. I would not recommend it, no matter how good and easy to use it is. 200 dollars is way too much. Even after the 100 bucks discount you have now is still pretty damn much.
it is basically an one trick pony OS, heavily specialized, sure.
I want it to like it, because I do see the appeal. Just not in this way. I wonder if it isn't already dead on arrival.
EDIT: it seems the normal price is even more bonkers, at 300 dollars. Nope. Hard pass. I couldn't even justify the 200 dollars I thought it was. This needs a serious repricing. there is no way I could ever recommend it to anyone for this price.
It looks good, but $299 retail is ridiculous. Unraid costs less and is an established product. If they'd started unraid at this kind of pricing I feel it would have failed.
Also for ZFS expansion now is this in a way similar to what has been possible with unraid? Can ayone smarter with storage than me explain what the pros and cons / differences are between having expandable ZFS pools and unraids multi drive meshing system
I can actually get onboard with this. Not for any advanced users, or myself for that matter – i think advanced users are still going to stick to the old faithfuls for hypervisors/NAS etc but I could actually teach my tech illiterate brother this. Even a few gaming buddies of mine have kinda wanted a NAS but not really knowing much about them just shrug it off.
This could be a really good gateway application for a lot of folks to get into the more advanced stuff out there. Even for the price (the bad part of this) I think its decent enough still for newbies / ordinary folks to justify
Looks extremely promising. Not $300 promising.
12:27 I think you meant to say vdev instead of pool here. It's been possible to expand the pool by adding vdevs for as long as I can remember. TrueNAS has only recently got the ability to expand vdevs. If you mean a single vdev pool then yes what you are saying is true in that specific case.
if you want justa nas to put your files on it, use unifi and thats all. It cant get more simple than that