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darkfeline writes:

As reported on LWN and Ars Technica, iXsystems — the company behind FreeNAS — is creating a new Debian/Linux distribution called TrueNAS SCALE.

FreeNAS is coming to Linux
TrueNAS isn’t abandoning BSD—but it is adopting Linux

FreeNAS is a popular FreeBSD-based FOSS NAS distribution. Recently, it has been merged with TrueNAS into TrueNAS CORE. TrueNAS is iXsystems's enterprise/commercial variant of the FOSS FreeNAS. After the merge, both FOSS and enterprise users will run the same distribution; enterprise users will, however, be able to access the enterprise features via some licensing scheme. (The submitter has not researched the FOSS licensing implications, but assumes it is implemented in a way that doesn't compromise the integrity for FOSS users.)

Moving forward, iXsystems is developing FreeNAS SCALE, which is based on Debian Linux. FreeNAS SCALE will be maintained alongside FreeNAS CORE, the FreeBSD version.

One of the motivations for using Debian could be that ZFS development is now happening primarily on Linux and getting backported/merged into FreeBSD. Also, as a FreeNAS user myself, being able to run Linux containers (which are now in widespread use) is a big advantage. Perhaps iXsystems thinks so as well.

From the announcement FreeNAS and TrueNAS are Unifying - iXsystems, Inc. - Enterprise Storage & Servers:

FreeNAS and TrueNAS have been separate-but-related members of the #1 Open Source storage software family since 2012. FreeNAS is the free Open Source version with an expert community and has led the pursuit of innovations like Plugins and VMs. TrueNAS is the enterprise version for organizations of all sizes that need additional uptime and performance, as well as the enterprise-grade support necessary for critical data and applications.

From the beginning at iXsystems, we’ve developed, tested, documented, and released both as separate products, even though the vast majority of code is shared. This was a deliberate technical decision in the beginning but over time became less of a necessity and more of “just how we’ve always done it”. Furthermore, to change it was going to require a serious overhaul to how we build and package both products, among other things, so we continued to kick the can down the road. As we made systematic improvements to development and QA efficiency over the past few years, the redundant release process became almost impossible to ignore as our next major efficiency roadblock to overcome. So, we’ve finally rolled up our sleeves.

With the recent 11.3 release, TrueNAS gained parity with FreeNAS on features like VMs and Plugins, further homogenizing the code. Today, we announce the next phase of evolution for FreeNAS and TrueNAS.

With the 12.0 release coming in the latter half of the year, we will not only bring more features and improvements than any release that has come before it, we will also unify both products into a single software image and name! This shift will have a great many benefits for users, but before we go into further detail, we’d like to first reassure you that there are no plans to stop releasing a free version, close the source or limit features. Just want to make sure that’s out of the way before we go on! 🙂

In case you were wondering, it appears they do not support the Raspberry Pi.

Original Submission