G-M0N3Y-2503

At one point I was thinking of gifting some family member a NAS, but license transfers aren't a thing and the cost of HW these days. I'd like to avoid the cloud too, so my current "off-site" backup is a laptop that I plan to grab running out the door.

I think the reasoning is, if you're paying for cloud storage and happy with it, then you probably wouldn't bother with a NAS. Realistically, cloud alone is probably enough for most people. So I think they are targeting people who want to own their own data, so "buddy" back up is probably the easiest. Marketing aside, it's really just a 2nd license to HexOS you need, the hardware and off-site could be a VM in the cloud if you wanted.

Hype, so keen for suib 5 second load times!

The nuance I see is: Guesstimate for initial release, end of 2025. Oh shit, people want a local UI? Guess that's fair but that's a tone of extra work... but here's hoping... (I like many assumed the local UI was a part of the original plan) End of 2025: So it turns out the local UI was a tone of extra work, but we have a better guesstimate, Q1 2026. 1 Week before the end of Q1: Ok beta-beta release, If this goes flawlessly we might just make it... End of Q1: So transitioning X all at once is a massive migration that you can't really test for that well, so we'll have to do it gradually so we can cater for the inevitable fallout. Maybe we can do that over a month? Obviously I'm completely guessing (see, lack of communication) and could be completely wrong, but the general rule I've seen is go off the magnitude of the guesstimate, the longer the period the less accurate it is.

Don't get me wrong, the communication is at what i would call a minimum, any less and I'd guess it was abandoned. But, it's a consistent and reliable minimum so far. I check the forum every other day, so would i appreciate more details, definitely. But would i trade anything for that outcome, probably not. So with the minimum communication and knowledge of the software development process patterns, I'm content enough. But that's not an expectation for others I have either. If you'd trade a license for that outcome and the team decide that they should improve communication because of it, hey, that's good too,

Their track record shows that even the last day of the deadline is fair game, Though that's true to hear about delays too.

You're not wrong, the nuance is the size of the company, with unlimited resources you can do unlimited things, so the line gets drawn somewhere short of that. Even if they are doing really well and have a lot of resources and can start doing as you suggest. It's difficult to scale a company, so that also takes time. The one think your bit off on, is I've seen plenty of physical goods brands forums or even big brands as dead as these forums. But I think it's that there isn't as much community around commodity goods, so it's inherently dead. Also they seem more responsive to the feedback from within the app than the forums. Or in the case of this thread, their discord.

@Ammonia some people seem to be getting that to work in this thread

It works

It also could be the case that they've done a bunch of internal testing and are just gradually rolling it out. But In software development delays occur, and people will be upset. It's way better to phrase an initial role out as early access testing in case there is an unforeseen showstopper. Than say it's good and then be called out for buggy software. So really it's a matter of if they hire PR or a community manager or not. I vote that there are better ways to spend that money. Considering that roadmaps and timelines are just a guess to attempt to make people happy, from my perspective they've been about as inaccurate as I'd expect, so no red flags from my perspective.

The forum seems more for support these days, so it isn't frequented by everyone, and the updates are about quarterly unless something goes seriously wrong. Don't get me wrong I am curious too, but the link is for just the build system. Since HexOS embeds their own files in the OS for their installer I wouldn't be surprised if the answer was they had their own one already.

IDK really depends on how much they've been cooking and how reliable it is when all is said and done. At least what has been rumoured is a fair bit from a small team.

For me, I just resorted to leaving the VM on all the time, outside of memory usage idle and off don't change much in terms of usage. For access I just resorted to creating bookmarks for the members at first. Afraid there is no easier way that I know of. Later I did a reverse proxy and added DNS entries for all the local domain names for each service, but that was a fair bit of technical setup.

I had a false positive of an unhealthy drive previously in the HexOS UI, so I imagine they would provide some kind of similar functionality even if TrueNAS changes something under the hood.

It sounds like there are still alerts of some sort, surely they are comparable.

I believe they have confirmed that HexOS will be able to be used completely offline. If I recall correctly, Offline activation may not be supported and for buddy backup a method will be possible, but the setup may not be as easy/convenient. Lastly I believe it's undecided if outbound connections can be disabled like the deck outside of air gaping the system.

From what I understood it was a price issue, I wonder if the licenses could be upgraded for extra at some point.

I thought "Early adopter Tax" was because you have to report all the bugs and do all the initial testing. So they pay in their time too 😛 I didn't think there was any of that kind of logic TBH, sales are just what makes business sense. Buyers remorse is more to do with the perceived value, and in IMO for a lifetime licenses and the scope of the product in that time, the value will be there at any price. That said at $300 of my dolllarydoos, I don't think I could justify buying it for someone who may just use a share folder only, but maybe subscription pricing will make it more reasonable for them to buy it.

From my perspective, I invested for software gain and Linus invested for software and monetary gain. Sometimes investments don't pay off, but I believed and still believe in the direction enough to risk it. As a software developer myself, learning is part of the journey, so it's actually a good sign they are forthcoming with what they learnt and have the confidence to continue, IMO. As long as there is progress being made, it's just a matter of enough before resources run out.

It has been alleged to work, there was a post from the admins that went over options a month or two back with more details.

Most apps seperate config and user data. I'd guess the reason for this would be, people primarily care about the user data (Photos). So the config data like user profiles/Album organisation are less important. The idea being, maybe immich turns into a dumpster fire and you want to use something else, at which point you only care about the photos. So that app data, or config data as I called it are historically different, so additional work may be necessary.

They recently mentioned concerns about reselling licenses, which is to say they seem cautious in this respect. So I'd guess we'd be waiting a while. That said, I have non-techy people in my life that store important things on USBs. I think the only network attached I could convince them of would be as you suggest.

I think the way this would work is by having two virtual networks (bridges) on the NAS. A network switch but virtual. One sends all outbound traffic through a VPN and the other through your regular network. So apps like a torrent You might plug into the VPN switch and the others you'd plug into the regular switch. So all apps would be supported. Only question would be what VPNs are supported. But then again, some support open standards like OpenVPN or Wireguard so you'd be able to connect a few different options by just implementing them.

So the difference really comes down to the account you use to login and manage each system . if you want to give someone else access to manage one of the systems. If the license is on your account, you have to give them your login. Otherwise, buying on a seperate account you have to give them the seperate login. The latter not being as cheap as the former.

@oliver12 taking a guess, i think it would probably "work", except it would only have one account on both. So at that point it's just your backup on offsite machine, rather than a backup to a buddies machine who also happens to be offsite. If you wanted to gift this machine so that your parents could have their own, you'd need to give them your account at which point they could also access the machine you have.