Which OS should I use?

[Enquiries]

Hello! I am a big fan and watch your videos frequently! Thanks to you, I bought my first NAS, the UGREEN DXP4800 Plus, and two 8TB Seagate IronWolf Pro, which arrived today. What I would like to ask is regarding the OS I should use. I have a copy of Eshtek's HexOS that I bought back when it was $99, as it looked very promising, and I wanted to invest for when they mature and get bigger. What I am questioning is which between UgOS and HexOS has more features & extensibility, maturity & user experience, and optimization & support. Maybe I should consider HexOS in the future once they're no longer in beta and fully released? If you could recommend which of the two OS I should stick to, I'd be greatly appreciative!

[ed]

Hi, thanks for the message and congrats on the DXP4800 Plus, that is a solid platform for a first NAS. Between the two operating systems you mentioned, UgOS Pro is the one you should use right now. It is more mature, has a complete set of core apps, stable storage management, working snapshots, sensible SMB and NFS behaviour, and active updates. The photo app, AI indexing, Docker support and backup tools are already usable for daily work, and the system has reached the point where most features behave predictably.

HexOS is interesting, but it is still early. The interface is clean and the roadmap is ambitious, but file services, permissions, containers, photo handling and networking all need more development before it is ready to rely on. At the moment it is closer to a public beta than a finished NAS platform, which means updates can change behaviour, some features are incomplete and long term support is not fully defined yet.

You made the right call buying it early if you believe in the project, but it is better suited for testing and experimenting rather than running your main storage. The safe approach is to run UgOS Pro now, keep HexOS installed on a spare SSD or small partition for future testing, and only switch when it reaches full release and has stable storage tools and clear support policies.