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Hey guys. Apologies for the lack of comms on our side. We've been very heads down and focused on the Q2 update and planning for our first team offsite meeting in June. I'm working on a blog post for this week with more information and planning a regular schedule to provide updates more consistently. Regarding the pace of progress, something to keep in mind. We built Eshtek on a bootstrapped budget to avoid the temptation of taking big VC money and forced to race for an exit. That's how products become enshittified as we've seen with so many over the years. We were very deliberate and intentional in our partnerships and investors. We're in this for the long haul. But doing this still comes at a cost. Yes our Black Friday launch was wildly more successful than we could have hoped, but an influx of cash has a delayed effect to benefitting productivity within a business. Once you get it, you have to make sure it stays (refunds) and you have to be smart about how you spend it (services, tools, people, etc.). Then it takes time to make all of those things work well for you. If we would have taken a couple million back in 2022 when we incorporated, we'd already be at 1.0, but we'd also not have as much control over the business and our vision. I don't blame anyone for their comments. HexOS is very light right now. Apps are badly needed to improve. Fully agreed. We released it when we did to prove the concept and that we have the chops to build this thing. It gave us more than enough capital to get there and we immediately reinvested that extra capital to not only expand our team faster than planned, but to expand our roadmap in ways we haven't even publicly disclosed yet. I guess this is a long way of asking you all to have faith and I will do better at providing more frequent updates and not leaving you in the dark for so long. Thank you.

New blog post up today providing a status update on HexOS! https://hexos.com/blog/hexos-q1-status-update

It makes sense, will think about it. Also I want to have a raid of max 4 disks, and if I need to expand, just do a second (HDD) RAID with new disks which I can then expand the system by swapping the disks in the future. So if I would have 4x 8TB, will swap the 8 TB disks with 20 TB in the future (example), that way I don't need to swap *all* disks at once, but can just do a few at the same time, while keeping my hardware (and software) the same.

It looks like they don't sell directly, and I probably will go with the EXOS disks in the end since they are a lot cheaper. In Europe it looks like they are only selling through 3rd party resellers. (at least in my country) Although the disks are a lot lower, based on how they handle import taxes, and also the transport costs, it will be cheaper to get "new ones". Great tip for anyone who doesn't need to worry about this though! So simply put: if you run Linux, try to only use Intel cards? Thanks for all the tips there, Since I won't go for any Plex etc, and I have currently a preference of AMD over Intel (and AM5 is currently easily upgradable for the future) I will stick with AM5 for now. I saw you put the 24 TB disks there, and 3x a 128GB SSD. Why would you go for a 3x 128GB ssd for the OS, wouldn't 2 be enough even for a RAID 1 setup? Also the 24TB are (currently) a bit more expensive per GB, any big reason you went for those, other than: they are bigger? Thanks everyone for there 2Cents 🙂 I haven't decided yet when I will get it, but it's now getting more and more into shape. I might build it in a few months, and will definitely update once I received it how everything's going also with changes, and will share once finished.

If you haven't already i'd definitely check out serverpartdeals.com. Got 4 Exos drives from them and like others said cheaper per TB than Iron wolfs. and even with shipping International, in my case UK, still comes out cheaper.

I've been buying THESE direct from Seagate and have been really impressed with their performance. This also has the benefit of really low chance of counterfeit drives and WAY cheaper prices (though it appears you are in the EU so unsure how the price/shipping would work for you) Best of luck!!

Not especially which is why I posted the question. Was hoping a few folks would chime in about new devices being considered. Glad I posted the question as there is really good feedback! Please share the link to the wooden case - that'd be cool to see.

We at the mod team do try to advocate for the rest of the community and often bring up issues that need resolving with the team at Eshtek. It does take some time to get to it but a lot of what the mod team brings up does get addressed. Recently someone from the Eshtek team setup a meeting with some users with an issue the mod team had escalated. The system isn't perfect but we are trying and hopefully improving.

I can't talk for everyone, but this is all I want. Better communication. When things go well, and when things go bad. As a Community Manager myself, I honestly see this as money well spent ("if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" and all that). If I can suggest something, have a look at what Nothing did with the Community Board Observers (here, for reference). It's a good way to boost communication, show transparency, and ensure you have a two-way channel of communication. Aside from that, a good community manager can also help you avoid talking too corporate with your users, they shouldn't be someone who speaks the same language as PR or Marketing. A community manager could also easily run a couple of series of always-on content (like Weekly/Monthly Updates, AMAs, and whatnot) to bridge the communication gap. Again, I'm biased, but hiring from your core users (typically from the moderation team), can also be an easy way to onboard someone who already knows the Community, knows the product, and knows how to interact with the rest of the users (and can possibly be a cheaper option than hiring a seasoned community manager). If you want to discuss some ideas, hit me up. I'll gladly share my user-turned-mod-turned-staff story and a few learnings I got along the way (no, I'm not pitching myself, I don't have the bandwidth even if I wanted to).

I totally hear you, but please don't see any of those guides as wasted efforts! They accelerate our ability to bug fix, troubleshoot, and improve things. Please know that we read a lot more here than we write here because you guys are just generating valuable content at a breathtaking pace and this forum is a great place for us to mine for data on how various apps and services should work based on your direct experiences with TrueNAS. Case in point, I've been linking the TimeMachine guide to our team to review as they prepare for that feature to make its way to HexOS natively. Other guides will be valuable time-savers for the dev team as well. You guys are just ahead of us on where we're working in the project right now.

I suspect that the general technical IQ of our community has been elevated as a direct result of the HexOS development time. We've collectively worked to solve, hack and workaround quite a bit. Just take a look at our DIRECTORY OF GUIDES not to mention the wealth of posts with amazing feedback. All of this will enable future users access to information that will help solve THEIR issues. (always plan to make life better for future you) But I also get it. We've been in this for 6 months, we've paid and we're still in for additional dev time. I wonder if the expectation of NOW is larger than the idea of investment towards a greater good. Perhaps. Your money, time, patience, experience and tolerance is different from mine. No better. No worse. I post this not to advocate for or against any situation you are trying to solve by using HexOS. Only offer my own perspective that I think this will be a fun ride. Like anything else worth learning it will be fraught with frustration, elation and growth. A ride I feel is worth the price of admission. This is the ground floor and I'm enjoying contributing and seeing others contribute towards a novel, innovative solution. One that may take more time than I'd like. But it's not about me. It's about the journey. Respect to all.