FreeNAS 8.0 will be GNU/Linux, no longer FreeBSD

Looks like FreeNAS will switch from FreeBSD to Debian GNU/Linux for the next major release. In July this year Volker Theile registered a new project called CoreNAS, which is what 8.0 will be based upon.

This means that they will lose native ZFS support (probably one of the biggest attractions), I don’t think that ZFS over Fuse will really be an acceptable option. It’ll be interesting to see if they pick up on Btrfs instead 🙂

The decision wasn’t easy, but was required due to users constantly wanting new features which were just too hard to put into the existing system. Bugs were also a major factor, saying:

My decision to use Linux for the next version was because there are too much bugs in the core FreeBSD system. Simply have a look into the bug tracker. FreeNAS does not run on many systems, mainly new hardware makes trouble. The main reason is the driver problem with FreeBSD which seems to be no problem with Linux because there are great companies in the back that support it. Also the Linux developer community is much greater than the FBSD one.

Volker also lists some of the pros:

– Text and grahical installer that can be customized. This means no hand written install scripts anymore which causes some problems in FreeNAS
– WOL works in Linux
– lmsensor – A WORKING sensor framework which is a really needed feature in FreeNAS to check the CPU/MB temps and fan speeds
– Better Samba performance
– Ability to implement HA features
– System can be updated via ‘apt-get’ or any other deb package manager
– Better driver support
– Maybe ‘ZFS’ over FUSE (there is already one commercial product available that uses this feature)
– NFS4
– …

3 thoughts on “FreeNAS 8.0 will be GNU/Linux, no longer FreeBSD

  1. Hmmm looks like FreeNAS will stay FreeBSD and be built and supported by iXSystems. CoreNAS will be Debian.

    Check out the interview with the head of iXSystems:
    http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/2009/12/bsdtalk-182-freenas-with-josh-paetzel.html

    Votdev is a Linux user and was kind of running the FreeNAS project. He thought he was going to have to rewrite the GUI (based on MOnOwall, non modular) to add features and with the upgrade to FreeBSD 8.0. He wanted to go with Linux, something he was more familiar with, for the next version and the original creator of FreeNAS decided that he should start his own project and handed the FreeNAS reigns to iXSystems.

    I wish Votdev luck and look forward to see what he does with CoreNAS. Openfiler is great but I’d like to see something with more features targeting home/soho users.

  2. well Volker was doing cornas and is now renamed to openmediavault go look at been bloginh it for months bit out of date we are 🙂

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