Stopped buying storage appliances when my old drobo went out of support. Now I get a suitable case, fill it with drives and go from there. Even a usb tower with

Stopped buying storage appliances when my old drobo went out of support. Now I get a suitable case, fill it with drives and go from there. Even a usb tower with ten drives is far more preferable than some proprietary linux derivative with a downward ticking support window. I genuinely believe you're better off with a combination of: A. an integrated solution like freenas/truenas, unraid or even ceph if you want even more steps. Install and configure. Done. B. a base linux install with just the particular file servers you need. Install and tinker. Auto-update. Remove unnecessary packages.