HomeioTrueNAS earns its install when the machine's job is storage: ZFS, snapshots, replication, shares with real permissions. Plenty of people install it for the apps and live with a storage OS they barely use. If that is you, Homeio runs the same kind of apps on the Debian or Ubuntu you already have, and manages the host around them.
Most people leave TrueNAS for one of two reasons: it asks for too much hardware, or they mostly used it for apps. The first group wants a lighter NAS; the second wants an app server.
Open source (AGPL-3.0) · Debian, Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi OS or Docker
For the people who installed TrueNAS for its apps: an app store, a file manager with Samba shares, disk partitioning, SMART health, scheduled tasks and backups, on a normal Linux. No ZFS management, so pair it with a NAS if your data needs that.
Best for: Running Docker apps on modest hardware, next to or instead of a NAS.
Open source (GPL-3.0) · installs on Debian · x86 and Raspberry Pi
The lightweight NAS: shares, software RAID, SMART, scheduled jobs and a plugin system, including Docker Compose. It runs comfortably where TrueNAS would not.
Best for: A free NAS on old hardware or a Pi.
Paid licence · own OS booted from a USB stick · x86
Mixes disks of any size in a parity array, which ZFS does not, and has a huge Docker catalog through Community Applications plus virtual machines. Writes are slower than on a striped pool.
Best for: A growing media library on mismatched drives.
Open source (AGPL-3.0) · own Debian-based OS · x86
A hypervisor that also handles ZFS pools. Many homelabs run Proxmox on the metal and put a NAS or an app server in a VM or LXC container on top.
Best for: One machine split into several servers.
Open source · FreeBSD · x86
Grew out of the original FreeNAS code and keeps its spirit: ZFS on FreeBSD, small and conservative. The closest thing to TrueNAS CORE now that CORE has stopped getting features.
Best for: FreeBSD and ZFS fans leaving TrueNAS CORE.
Free up to 4 disks and 3 users · own OS · x86-64
A friendlier NAS appliance from the CasaOS team, with RAID, ZFS as an option and an app store. Simpler than TrueNAS, more closed than OpenMediaVault.
Best for: A simple NAS appliance, especially on Zima hardware.
| Need | In Homeio |
|---|---|
| Keep your OS | Installs on the system you have, on x86_64 or ARM64, including a Raspberry Pi. TrueNAS: a dedicated OS install on x86 hardware. |
| Run self-hosted apps | Catalog installs with a settings form, compose editing in place, live logs, update checks. TrueNAS: Docker-based apps since 24.10. |
| Protect data against disk failure | Not Homeio's job. Use RAID or a second copy on another machine. TrueNAS: ZFS redundancy, scrubs, snapshots and replication. Its core strength. |
| Network shares | One-click Samba shares, guest-writable, for a trusted home LAN. Mount SMB shares from other machines. TrueNAS: SMB and NFS with users, groups and ACLs. |
| Disk health | Usage, temperatures and a usage alert. SMART support is planned. TrueNAS: SMART tests and alerts. |
| Recurring jobs | A cron scheduler for app restarts, image pulls, backups and scripts, with failure notifications. TrueNAS: cron jobs and scheduled tasks in its UI too. |
| Reach it from outside | Tailscale for the dashboard, Cloudflare Tunnel to publish single apps on your domain. |
| Hardware budget | Runs on a Pi or a mini PC next to the apps. No ECC or HBA advice to follow. TrueNAS: happiest with plenty of RAM and several drives. |
A common split: the NAS keeps the disks and ZFS, a mini PC or a Pi runs the apps and reads the media over the network.
On TrueNAS, create a dataset such as tank/media and share it over SMB with a user for the app server.
On the app server, install Homeio.
curl -fsSL https://get.homeio.app | sudo bashCheck that the share is reachable from the app server. Homeio's terminal is a full shell, so you can do this from the browser.
sudo apt install -y smbclient cifs-utils
smbclient -L //truenas.local -U mediaMount the share at boot. Store the user name and password in a file only root can read, then add one line to /etc/fstab.
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/media
printf 'username=media
password=YOUR_PASSWORD
' | sudo tee /root/.smb-truenas >/dev/null
sudo chmod 600 /root/.smb-truenas
echo '//truenas.local/media /mnt/media cifs credentials=/root/.smb-truenas,uid=1000,gid=1000,iocharset=utf8,_netdev 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
sudo mount -a && ls /mnt/mediaInstall Jellyfin or Immich from Homeio's store and point its media folder at /mnt/media. TrueNAS keeps the snapshots; the app server stays small and replaceable.
Only for one kind of machine. TrueNAS Community Edition (formerly SCALE) is an operating system built around ZFS: pools, snapshots, scrubs, replication, and SMB and NFS shares with proper users and ACLs. Homeio has none of that. It is an alternative when the machine's real job is running Jellyfin, Immich, Home Assistant and friends, and TrueNAS was chosen mostly for its apps.
No. It installs on Debian, Ubuntu or Raspberry Pi OS. The script install adds Node, PostgreSQL, Nginx and a few systemd units, and creates /DATA; the Docker install adds two containers. Everything else on the machine stays as you set it up.
A disk manager that lists drives and partitions, creates and deletes partitions, formats ext4, XFS, Btrfs, exFAT, NTFS or FAT, and mounts or unmounts them, with the target validated before a wipe. USB drives appear in the file manager as you plug them in. You can share a folder over Samba and mount SMB shares from other machines. No ZFS, no RAID management, no snapshots.
They are guest-writable: anyone on your network can read and write a shared folder. That is fine on a home LAN you trust and wrong anywhere else. TrueNAS's SMB service, with per-user permissions, is the right tool if you need access control on shares.
Since 24.10, TrueNAS apps run on Docker too, so the gap is smaller than it was. Homeio's default catalog is the CasaOS app store, and you can paste any compose file or docker run command. The difference is where they live: on TrueNAS, inside a storage OS that owns the machine; on Homeio, on a general-purpose Linux install.
It makes a weekly archive of its database, everything under /DATA and your compose stacks, keeps the last seven by default, and restores from Settings. The archive sits on the same disk, so it is a restore point, not protection against a dead drive. ZFS snapshots and replication are in a different league; Homeio makes no claim to match them.
It shows usage and temperatures and raises an alert past a disk-usage threshold you set. It does not read SMART data yet; that is on the roadmap. TrueNAS runs SMART tests and scrubs today.
For storage, OpenMediaVault: free, open source, on Debian, and light enough for old hardware or a Raspberry Pi. For running apps on the Linux you already have, Homeio. If you want ZFS without TrueNAS, Proxmox VE creates ZFS pools from its interface too, though it is a hypervisor first.
TrueNAS CORE, the FreeBSD edition (FreeNAS until 2020), no longer gets new features: iXsystems develops the Debian-based edition, now called TrueNAS Community Edition. If you want to stay on FreeBSD, XigmaNAS is the closest. If you used SCALE mainly for its apps, a Linux server with Homeio runs the same Docker apps with far less RAM.
A common split is TrueNAS on the storage box and Homeio on a small app server that mounts TrueNAS shares over SMB from its file manager. Each does its own job.
Yes, it is open source under the AGPL-3.0. TrueNAS Community Edition is free as well; TrueNAS Enterprise is hardware with support contracts.
The demo needs no install. On a spare machine or a VM, the Docker install takes a few minutes and listens on port 12026, so it does not fight your current setup for port 80.