FreeNAS 0.8 will be based on Debian GNU/Linux! Volker (the FreeNAS core developer) started an intermediate project called CoreNAS. FreeNAS 0.8 will be based on that.
From the FreeNAS tracker:
Anyway, 0.7 seems to be the last version of FreeNAS as it is right at the moment. For the next version the whole system will be recoded (what i’m doing at the moment). There will be no more embedded installs anymore, also the OS will be Debian.
Some of the advantages for moving over to a Linux based NAS system given are:
- Text and graphical 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
