VM Support & V1.0

[TwoStroke]

Hi all,

 

Just seeking clarification here - the HexOS team have said they're still targeting V1.0 for release this year. A topic on Reddit has a response from the HexOS_Official user stating

Quote

While this is definitely the plan for the future, we don’t have the VM support just yet (we postponed that feature for 2026).

Can the team clarify when VM support is coming, as that was a major selling point for HexOS. Will V1.0 be launched without a major feature? I understand that 25.04 pushed back the release of VM features, but from the how I read the Q1 update (the last time this was spoken about, in March...) I took it to be that it was being done, just at a lower priority than the App support, but would still be coming this year. If I am looking at the HexOS website, we are currently at 3/6 of the below features. Even if they launch App deployment in the next few weeks for their Q3 update, I don't see how they are able to complete VMs, Buddy Backups & Snapshots in the next 3 months, which means they can't actually be targeting a 2025 release, but we've had no official word saying the release has been pushed back.

 

The last word on this was from March 7th:

Quote

We are still planning on a 1.0 release this year, and we will keep you all up to date as development progresses and if any of these priorities change.

[jonp]

16 hours ago, TwoStroke said:

Can the team clarify when VM support is coming, as that was a major selling point for HexOS. Will V1.0 be launched without a major feature?

We officially announced our intention to delay VM support as part of the Q1 status update back in March.  Since then, its important to note that TrueNAS pivoted their VM strategy again when they decided to drop Incus for traditional VMs and go back to their previous implementation with libvirt (as of 25.04.2).  Due to all of this, we decided it would be best to restart the VM implementation in 2026 once development is finalized.

16 hours ago, TwoStroke said:

If I am looking at the HexOS website, we are currently at 3/6 of the below features. Even if they launch App deployment in the next few weeks for their Q3 update, I don't see how they are able to complete VMs, Buddy Backups & Snapshots in the next 3 months, which means they can't actually be targeting a 2025 release, but we've had no official word saying the release has been pushed back.

I can see the confusion here, but we never promised all of these features would be delivered with the 1.0 release.  Our focus on 1.0 is achieving platform stability.  Furthermore, you're forgetting one pretty major feature that wasn't listed on the site:  Local UI.  This is the next feature we are focusing on after the Q3 release.  Snapshots and Buddy Backups are still possibilities for this year, but likely would continue to carry the "beta" tag into 2026 to give more time for public testing.

The Q3 update is nearly complete, which will carry some pretty big features including MULTIPLE new curated apps and folder support for Apple Time Machine/Quotas.  Furthermore, we will have a new "Experimental Features" toggle that will enable users to create Encrypted folders as well as provide access to our new app templating/install scripts solution.

[Sonic]

1 hour ago, jonp said:

We officially announced our intention to delay VM support as part of the Q1 status update back in March.  Since then, its important to note that TrueNAS pivoted their VM strategy again when they decided to drop Incus for traditional VMs and go back to their previous implementation with libvirt (as of 25.04.2).  Due to all of this, we decided it would be best to restart the VM implementation in 2026 once development is finalized.

I can see the confusion here, but we never promised all of these features would be delivered with the 1.0 release.  Our focus on 1.0 is achieving platform stability.  Furthermore, you're forgetting one pretty major feature that wasn't listed on the site:  Local UI.  This is the next feature we are focusing on after the Q3 release.  Snapshots and Buddy Backups are still possibilities for this year, but likely would continue to carry the "beta" tag into 2026 to give more time for public testing.

The Q3 update is nearly complete, which will carry some pretty big features including MULTIPLE new curated apps and folder support for Apple Time Machine/Quotas.  Furthermore, we will have a new "Experimental Features" toggle that will enable users to create Encrypted folders as well as provide access to our new app templating/install scripts solution.

Looking forward to the Q3 release. Bring it on!

[TwoStroke]

4 hours ago, jonp said:

We officially announced our intention to delay VM support as part of the Q1 status update back in March.

Yeah, as mentioned in the post, I saw this. I just thought it meant instead of being early in 2025 it would be late 2025.

 

4 hours ago, jonp said:

I can see the confusion here, but we never promised all of these features would be delivered with the 1.0 release. 

I understand this, but your website only says "*Some features will not be immediately available upon beta release.". If you are launching the product and having people pay full price for it, you need to either update your website to remove the not available features, or update it to make it VERY clear that these are future state features and not applicable to the current state of the product.

4 hours ago, jonp said:

The Q3 update is nearly complete, which will carry some pretty big features including MULTIPLE new curated apps and folder support for Apple Time Machine/Quotas.  Furthermore, we will have a new "Experimental Features" toggle that will enable users to create Encrypted folders as well as provide access to our new app templating/install scripts solution.

I am mostly excited for the new App Curation system, and to see how the team resolves the issues with the existing apps (Plex & Immich). I am cautiously optimistic about this update being the first time it feels like I will be using HexOS instead of TrueNAS.

[jonathanpublic]

15 hours ago, TwoStroke said:

I understand this, but your website only says "*Some features will not be immediately available upon beta release.". If you are launching the product and having people pay full price for it, you need to either update your website to remove the not available features, or update it to make it VERY clear that these are future state features and not applicable to the current state of the product.

To be fair to the developers, they aren't charging full price for it at the moment. The full intended price is $300 for a lifetime license. I just checked the website and it's still being sold for the beta pricing of $199.

[jonp]

19 hours ago, TwoStroke said:

I understand this, but your website only says "*Some features will not be immediately available upon beta release.". If you are launching the product and having people pay full price for it, you need to either update your website to remove the not available features, or update it to make it VERY clear that these are future state features and not applicable to the current state of the product.

Fair point.  We are planning to update the site for end of year with more content and details.  I'll make sure this gets addressed.

19 hours ago, TwoStroke said:

I am mostly excited for the new App Curation system, and to see how the team resolves the issues with the existing apps (Plex & Immich). I am cautiously optimistic about this update being the first time it feels like I will be using HexOS instead of TrueNAS.

There are three types of issues that can exist for a given app:  issues with the app itself (responsibility of the app developer), issues with the TrueNAS-cataloged container (responsibility of TrueNAS), and issues with the app curation itself (responsibility of HexOS).  For issues with the app, if we can clearly identify the problem, we have no problem carrying the torch up to the app author to get proper visibility if required.  For issues with the cataloged app in TrueNAS, we can escalate to TrueNAS directly for intervention if we can identify the root cause properly.  For issues with the curation, we can quickly modify our curation using the new system to push out a fixes.

We also will have a new docs site that will launch with the Q3 update explaining out the curation system works and how others can participate to help us fast-track the curation of other apps while we continue to work on core features.

[Todd Miller]

Is anyone directly associated with the HexOS app looking at the current review videos in youtube?  They are auto-generated on mass from your front page and possibly other sources I can't find.  It looks like you are working on a product quite different from what this forum page is describing.   I think you are losing both a great advertising tool but also an opportunity to do a five to ten minute video on what is going on, upcoming releases, what third quarter actually means to the company and the like.  Your last post with a little more fluff would have been perfect.  Public service announcements like don't update TrueNAS beyond a certain point could be useful.  I understand your knee jerk reaction to say it's too much work but I bet you could work miracles with something small like this.  Maybe you could get someone from LTT to make an appearance to remind everyone why they have high hopes for the product overall.  Be the way, what the heck is this video?  It's your web page I think but what is this guy talking about?  Someone must have gotten the scripts mixed up.