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I've been using unRAID for a while now, and it feels more like a community GitHub project rather than a closed-source commercial product I paid for. There are p

I've been using unRAID for a while now, and it feels more like a community GitHub project rather than a closed-source commercial product I paid for. There are plenty of weird issues that don't really make any sense but are apparently "by design", and support usually hasn't been helpful in my experience. I ran into an issue once where the Web interface wasn't working properly. I looked online for a way to restart the service via SSH, since none of the commands I could think of worked. I then came across the amazing answer from one of the official forum moderators that basically said "you don't need to know how to restart the service, just stop having the problem." I could have rebooted the entire system, but there were several Dockers running as well as other systems that had the storage mounted that I didn't want to interrupt for a simple web server issue. There's also the fun BTRFS and Docker issues. Maybe it's just me, but filling up a file system shouldn't completely corrupt it. There are rules you can set such as "don't copy a file unless 30GB is free" but somehow it seems to ignore this. You later find your Dockers no longer work if you restart them, giving the unhelpful error of "Error code 403", despite them working fine moments ago. Sometimes it just seems to do this for fun without the disk filling up. I could go on and on about all the weird issues and odd design choices.

n42 5y ago
it’s such a pet peeve, but the unRAID community normalizing the usage of “Dockers” for “Docker containers” makes me twitch.
- vanchor3 5y ago
  That's a good point. I never thought of that before, unfortunately I tend to pickup bad habits like that by watching the way others write. Though I do have to wonder if the Docker team would have used that term were it not already a registered trademark. I suppose it does sound a little silly.
  - n42 5y ago
    that's not your bad habit, that's just how language evolves naturally. like I said, a pet peeve. the part that makes me twitch is that the evolution of the term is happening in a hobbyist community, where I've never heard a professional use the term. when I read it it doesn't make linguistic since to me -- a "Docker" is not a thing, what is its plural? anyway, you do you.
- remram 5y ago
  I regularly cringe when people refer to "Docker images" as "containers" but this is a step further.
- mattl 5y ago
  That’s close to the usage of “screen saver” to mean wallpaper/background image and those people who think MAC and Mac are the same.
slickdork 5y ago
I've been using it for about 4 years and agree that it the community feels like it's an open source project... and then you remember you've paid for it, and there hasn't been a (non beta) release in almost a full year, and all development is happening behind closed doors. I still really enjoy unraid for what it does, but I also feel like I can't recommend it any longer.
- stavros 5y ago
  Sounds like a great tagline: "All the support and drive of an open-source project at commercial prices!"
- 4kelly 5y ago
  To be clear it was a one-time lifetime payment! Kinda seems like this latest release accumulated a lot features and could be part of the relatively slow release pace. https://forums.unraid.net/bug-reports/prereleases/unraid-os-version-6100-rc1-available-r1514/ https://forums.unraid.net/bug-reports/prereleases/unraid-os-... However, their iteration approach seems smart to me. As far as I can tell they have experimented with some of the big features as optional plugins before adding them to an official release. For example: in between the latest official release and now they released MyServers plugin to remotely monitor and perform high level server operations. It’s great and has been gone from early access alpha to a full fledged product. Additionally the wireguard integration was released as a plugin first, and will simply be more deeply integrated in the latest upcoming release. https://unraid.net/product/my-servers https://unraid.net/product/my-servers
  - bb88 5y ago
    > To be clear it was a one-time lifetime payment! That's on them and their business model, not on the customers. In software a business needs a source of income, otherwise you have what unraid has currently: a burst of income at the beginning, and less and less resources to handle the support calls that come in later. Edited to add: It's also why Plex sucks lately. Lifetime members paid up front for maybe $100. When Plex burnt through that money and wasn't getting a return with new subscriptions, they started looking for ways to make Plex more profitable rather than making better software for their users.
bubblethink 5y ago
I think that's true for other mass market commercial closed source products too. Plex comes to mind.
thefz 5y ago
And browsing through 80 pages of a forum post to find the information you are looking for is frustrating. I regret dropping FreeNAS for Unraid. It feels amateurish and I don't trust community plugins at all.

n42 5y ago

it’s such a pet peeve, but the unRAID community normalizing the usage of “Dockers” for “Docker containers” makes me twitch.

vanchor3 5y ago
That's a good point. I never thought of that before, unfortunately I tend to pickup bad habits like that by watching the way others write. Though I do have to wonder if the Docker team would have used that term were it not already a registered trademark. I suppose it does sound a little silly.
- n42 5y ago
  that's not your bad habit, that's just how language evolves naturally. like I said, a pet peeve. the part that makes me twitch is that the evolution of the term is happening in a hobbyist community, where I've never heard a professional use the term. when I read it it doesn't make linguistic since to me -- a "Docker" is not a thing, what is its plural? anyway, you do you.
remram 5y ago
I regularly cringe when people refer to "Docker images" as "containers" but this is a step further.
mattl 5y ago
That’s close to the usage of “screen saver” to mean wallpaper/background image and those people who think MAC and Mac are the same.

slickdork 5y ago

I've been using it for about 4 years and agree that it the community feels like it's an open source project... and then you remember you've paid for it, and there hasn't been a (non beta) release in almost a full year, and all development is happening behind closed doors. I still really enjoy unraid for what it does, but I also feel like I can't recommend it any longer.

stavros 5y ago
Sounds like a great tagline: "All the support and drive of an open-source project at commercial prices!"
4kelly 5y ago
To be clear it was a one-time lifetime payment! Kinda seems like this latest release accumulated a lot features and could be part of the relatively slow release pace. https://forums.unraid.net/bug-reports/prereleases/unraid-os-version-6100-rc1-available-r1514/ https://forums.unraid.net/bug-reports/prereleases/unraid-os-... However, their iteration approach seems smart to me. As far as I can tell they have experimented with some of the big features as optional plugins before adding them to an official release. For example: in between the latest official release and now they released MyServers plugin to remotely monitor and perform high level server operations. It’s great and has been gone from early access alpha to a full fledged product. Additionally the wireguard integration was released as a plugin first, and will simply be more deeply integrated in the latest upcoming release. https://unraid.net/product/my-servers https://unraid.net/product/my-servers
- bb88 5y ago
  > To be clear it was a one-time lifetime payment! That's on them and their business model, not on the customers. In software a business needs a source of income, otherwise you have what unraid has currently: a burst of income at the beginning, and less and less resources to handle the support calls that come in later. Edited to add: It's also why Plex sucks lately. Lifetime members paid up front for maybe $100. When Plex burnt through that money and wasn't getting a return with new subscriptions, they started looking for ways to make Plex more profitable rather than making better software for their users.

bubblethink 5y ago

I think that's true for other mass market commercial closed source products too. Plex comes to mind.

thefz 5y ago

And browsing through 80 pages of a forum post to find the information you are looking for is frustrating. I regret dropping FreeNAS for Unraid. It feels amateurish and I don't trust community plugins at all.