TrueNAS 26 beta is here and trying to save you money

The TrueNAS team announced the initial beta for TrueNAS 26 yesterday, following TrueNAS 25.10 this past October. It's a major release for the Ubuntu-based distro intended as an operating system for NAS devices, in both free (Community Edition) and paid (Enterprise Appliances) editions.

What's new

• Built-in troubleshooting wizards: Now, when you get alerts about your NAS, a new system called "Guided Alerts" will offer advice and visual indicators pointing to where you should go to fix the issue.
• Data sharing and searching tools: TrueNAS 26 includes a swath of new services under the development team is calling "intelligent services." They include WebShare for easy, "Dropbox-like" file sharing between devices, fast file searching through WebShare, and LXC containter support.

What's getting better

• Hybrid pool management: TrueNAS 26 comes with OpenZFS 2.4, whose improvements in hybrid flash pools, scrubbing, and deduplication the developers say help protect you from "massive AI-induced 'memflation.'"
  • Your hard-earned cash can be spend on things other RAM.
• User management: The TrueNAS team says they've simplified the experience for managing users, saying it involves "fewer clicks and scrolling."
• NVIDIA card support: The Linux kernel has been updated to 6.18 LTS, which fixes issues with certain NVIDIA GPUs and adds support for new ones. They include the RTX 5050 and RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell.

What's going away

• Twice-yearly releases: There will only be annual releases going forward, rather than echoing Ubuntu's twice-yearly cycle. That's why the previous release was TrueNAS 25.10 and this ones is simply TrueNAS 26.

Zooming out

Why this update matters: The NAS devices that TrueNAS runs on let you take back control of your data from the cloud giants, and data sovereignty has become an increasingly big topic in the computing world.

My take: I hope Guided Alerts work better than the automated troubleshooting tools Windows offers. Those are almost always a letdown.

Diving in

The fineprint: There are more details about this release if you're curious (including an invite to visit TrueNAS at NAB Show Las Vegas this month) in the TrueNAS 26 BETA1 release notes.

Get it now: The beta image is available through TrueNAS' main download page. Be prepared to answer their prompts about enterprise options and newsletters.