StellarJay

As an addendum to my previous post as well, speaking to ARM based systems which aren't directly supported by TrueNAS (which is correct), there always exists the possibility of utilizing an ARM to x86 interpreter through something like VMWare or AArch64 to have HexOS deployed in a virtual machine that presents to HexOS as x86 and the interpreter/emulator will do the leg work to convert the commands to run on the ARM hardware (This has only been recently possible with Windows on ARM being viable now). Yes you will be losing some processing speed and efficiency but on many ARM based servers this would likely go unnoticed for the use cases of this type of setup if say a home based business was able to acquire an older enterprise grade ARM server on the cheap. As I've mentioned above I am known for integrating hardware and software together that was never designed to work with one another and have had numerous successes in doing so. I have a keen interest in hardware repurposing and reducing e-waste while still maintaining modern best practice's as much as possible. This is exactly the reason I got involved with HexOS because it has a ton of potential in providing several uses for repurposed hardware. PS. I generally ignore "recommended specifications" lists, they are all generally overly conservative in their estimations as to ensure full functionality with headroom. (which I get is necessary for businesses to do so as to avoid pushback if/when something doesn't work).

Two+ decades of professional IT experience here and this statement is incorrect. HexOS is just as much an operating system as Windows 95 which was built on an MS-DOS foundation just like HexOS is built on TrueNAS. TrueNAS is the engine that runs the processes but it is HexOS that makes the requests and provides a more intuitive user interface for flipping all the various controls, dials and switches that tell TrueNAS how to go about doing things. There are TONS of options available for tailoring the TrueNAS processing for various platform uses and HexOS is precisely targeting home office and small business users who have aging hardware that should be repurposed with more modern software running them to not only reduce E-waste on our planet but to also lessen the burden of having to pay out the nose for hardware that is way more than what is required for those users and make these systems more secure. That leaves TrueNAS able to focus on it's core user base of Enterprise organizations who have Teams of IT professionals who can integrate TrueNAS into their organizations just as is. That being said, nothing in this thread has precluded us from try to make these aging ReadyNAS boxes a viable option for running a barebones basic configuration of HexOS on and with Dev assistance it is absolutely possible to make an installation that could be easily deployed by some of the less tech savvy individuals who are very interested in the HexOS platform.

Thank you for the very detailed explanation, I really do appreciate it when people are very clear with their posts. I guess I should have introduced myself a little bit too though to maybe save you some of the hassle of having to over explain things. I'm an IT professional of more than two and a half decades working in everything from network engineering and SecOps to ICU board level repair/refurbishing to plugin and app development on numerous platforms and a whole bunch of other stuff in between. I'm quite familiar with current (and old school) raid technologies. I'm known for doing all kinds of funky DIY computer projects with hardware and software that were never designed for one another but it's a thrill for me when something ends up working out well. That being said there were a couple things I didn't know about in your post so TIL. I already knew that the RAM would be a bit of a sticking point for repurposing this hardware but I'm not overly concerned with speed as I am more focussed on reliability and security. If I can get the M.2 slot up and running I do have a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD (MLC with a DRAM Cache) I can use in it so that may increase performance for my primary use case of serving up media through Plex but I also use it as a archival backup for my important files and the system drives of my PC's. However I may just end up doing all that on a new NAS setup for myself as I'm very interested in taking advantage of the "buddy swap" feature of HexOS. I have a friend who I've set up my own reverse proxy VPN for and I'm looking into getting him his own NAS finally setup so he can stop mooching off of my hardware for his backing up and I'll be able to setup an encrypted space on his NAS for me to store my offsite backup copy on so I can finally stop paying for cloud storage and if I can repurpose the RN424 I can just give that to him.

There's an open m.2 slot in the ReadyNAS 424 as well and I'm about 98% sure that it supports up to 4GB of DDR4 RAM (adding an additional 2GB to the open slot) and I believe it may support up to 8GB total (I'm about 60% sure on that though). DDR4 RAM is pretty easy for me to come up with. I'm just not liking the idea of decommissioning perfectly good usable hardware. PS. I can't read the txt file you uploaded as I think txt files are blocked.

I would like to throw my hat into the arena on wanting to try getting HexOS working on Netgear ReadyNAS hardware. I have ReadyNAS 424 that has been working great but since Netgear backed out of the NAS game a few year back the OS is dated and I am constantly worried about it not being a secure as it should be but I have it pretty isolated to only working on my local network for serving up Plex media, but I'd really like to updated to a more modern OS that I can be confident in using for my own person image cloud storage that I can access from anywhere, it doesn't need to be fast, just reliable and secure. Here's the specs of the 424: Processor Manufacturer: Intel Processor Type : Atom Processor Model : C3338 Processor Core : Dual-core (2 Core) Processor Speed : 1.50 GHz Memory Standard Memory: 2 GB Memory Technology: DDR4 SDRAM Network & Communication Ethernet Technology: Gigabit Ethernet I believe there is an additional DDR4 SDRAM slot which could be used to add up to 2GB additional RAM I believe, possibly could support up to 8GB ( 2 x 4GB). I've found a couple posts where some people have managed to figure out how to get the hardware to chain load Linux Alpine on a ReadyNAS 4 series, it would be awesome if HexOS could implement some relatively easy process to allow us to update and repurpose these abandoned ReadyNAS devices who's hardware should be capable of supporting at least a basic barebones setup. Here's a GitHub project link for the most promising one I found: RustyDust/readynas-alpine: Convert ReadyNAS systems to an Alpine Linux box while keeping data and services intact. Perhaps the HexOS devs could use it as a starting point to come up with something we could use. I plan on setting up a basic Desktop PC with HexOS on it to potentially replace the ReadyNAS if I'm not able to use HexOS on the ReadyNAS as a backup plan.