But it is something that regular, non-geek, users should be aware off. (Narrator: Of course, they aren’t…)
Which is why I can get behind the bike shedding of renaming the current trains to “Pre-Release” and “Stable”, and showing Stable and Mission Critical versions on the download page, with an advanced further click to Pre-Release and Nightlies.
This would help steer users a little.
I’ve seen this phrase used a lot in this thread, and I’m not familiar with it–meaning?
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I want to leave this alone, and I will. But dude. Please consider…
It’s a brand-new feature. That’s why I’d like to see how it works out once users realize it’s there and switch to the General aka “Stable” train.
This is asking everyone but iX to take specific action to plaster over the source of confusion.
Stick them on it on 25.10.3, and tell them not to touch that particular selection because it’s an ix word for “Stable”
And this is asking them to tiptoe around a fragile UI for updates, because one mistake on their part will revoke the approved path from them until some brief window a year from now.
Something’s got to give.
It’s already be suggested that the download page only have the Mission Critical and General Availability versions OR have the other versions well marked as Early Access or Experimental. New installs of 25.10.3 are defaulted to the GA category. It takes a user intervention to change trains.
@jct, you could have just as easily put your in laws on 25.10.1 and switched them to the General train or do so right now with 25.10.3. Take responsibility as a Administrator. When on GA, you will only see updates that are released for GA status.
The Trains feature was new for the 25.10 series. Let it mature and see how it works. I would expect 25.10 series to be Mission Critical and the upcoming 26 to get GA near the end of the year.
@jct, you could have just as easily put your in laws on 25.10.1 and switched them to the General train or do so right now with 25.10.3. Take responsibility as a Administrator. When on GA, you will only see updates that are released for GA status.
As we’ve been saying: there was no option for General until Sunday. It wasn’t even shown as a scheduled option in the future. We were sitting on 25.10.3, waiting patiently, staring down the barrel of the same two options we’d always seen:
- Developer
- Early Access
The UI told us there were no other options. Forum leaders would get spicy about it, and point to a multidimensional vortex of marketing pages. But there was simply no way in the product to say “please, just find me the safe way forward.” Not a barred path; not an EE-only path; not a be-patient path; no path presented other than thar be dragons. And scorn.
———
If nothing changes, this will be the case again for users of 26.0, and 26.1, and… Until one Sunday a year from now, when the General path briefly reappears. Only to seal up again for the following cycle.
You’ll spend another year doggedly unable to pound into our heads why we should drop what we think we know about software and try instead to reason in terms of one exceptional company’s in-house project management culture. (Which frankly doesn’t seem to be of one voice anyway.)
The technical solution is right there. Ready to steer each archetype back on track by default. Without changing anything about the in-house culture — only the algorithm behind an update server, and the UI it presents.
You’ve been saying it, but you’re wrong. Install or revert to 25.10.1, choose the general train. Done.
Now — because there’s a General candidate. Believe me I checked in frequently. And we were discussing this very point before the tagging changed to make it work.
I should mention this system had worked its way up from Cobia or so, but never anything labeled beta in public-facing terminology.
I posted Feb 27 on how to switch 25.10.1 to the GA train. That version has been GA since, at least, that time.
If you got caught installing 25.10.2 or later, Sorry. There could be improvements to the process but it is also a case of users not reading the Documentation and the Software Status page.
TrueNAS company is used to their Enterprise customers and that is what is driving a lot of the development. Enterprise, usually, reads the release notes and decides if an upgrade in necessary or not. They test the EA or Developer software ahead of time, but not for production.
There were no Trains listed in 25.04 or earlier. The changes in 25.10 were supposed to be an improvement over that. Admins had to choose what updates to install. They got notified of available update but they were never ‘required’. There are still users out there with FreeNAS or early versions of TrueNAS. Support for FreeBSD 13 series should be dropped by freebsd.org any day now. There are still plenty of users that like and are staying on TrueNAS 13 (FreeBSD).
Updates have always been the choice of the Admin.
Ah! If it required a USB reinstall, that’s my problem — I’ve only driven it from across town this year. I assure you I’ve accurately described my experience, but I’ll cop to its being only my experience.
I seem to have become the story here. It would be counterproductive to continue pleading my case. I do very much appreciate all of you for making yourselves available to your devoted fans. 
I’ve always thought that trains/profiles are a promising start for the problems you set out to solve with them. It’s only their implementation that worries me. That, and some of this expressed frustration at users who simply don’t perceive it working as you’d intended. Even just in the visible subset.
Maybe my “Goldilocks” point is still useful in that regard? You could show and describe all the trains, even those which are incompatible or paywalled, and thus ineligible for selection. Having that context spelled out in situ will help us better understand your intentions and where we fit in.
Or at least it’ll facilitate better discussion when we start lobbying for unaddressed profiles. 
No, then. 25.10.1 had been on “General” for quite some time. If you’d been running that version a month ago, you’d have been able to choose the General train at that time. And if you’d done that, you’d never have been notified of either of the 25.10.2 releases, and wouldn’t have seen the 25.10.3 release until it hit General.
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Gah! Look. It just wasn’t working for everybody, and could stand to be improved. I have my own suggestions on how to improve it, but we find ourselves arguing if the patient wants to improve.
You just posted examples of 25.10.2 and 25.10.2.1. They were never GA. I posted those screenshots because I wasn’t sure if the options were by design or not. It turned out those two versions were not supposed to have the GA choice. They were not considered stable enough and/or had too many outstanding bugs.
The choice at that time was to set 25.10.1 as the active boot environment and change the train to GA. I expect that TrueNAS will stick with the current system at least until the end of the year and get two versions to GA or better status. 26 is a version that is marking the change to the expected, yearly release schedule, instead of aproximately every six months. That should help with the version churn also.
Fair enough. We shall endeavor to tiptoe accordingly. 
I think I get what happened now? Honest post-mortem; with your help I’ll try to learn from this:
- I install a much-anticipated release build of TrueNAS. As an admin; owning responsibility. Immediately, my intention is to keep them signed up for incremental bug-fixes from here.
- 25.10.0 showed only dev/EA
- … then eventually prompted me to jump to 25.10.1.
- 25.10.1 initially showed only dev/EA
- … then eventually got tagged GA!
- … and prompted me to jump to 25.10.2 because I was only EA.
- 25.10.2 showed me only dev/EA
- 25.10.2.1 showed me only dev/EA
- 25.10.3 showed me only dev/EA
- … until this week when I finished pulling hair, read the right forum post, and went hunting
- … half a year later, I caught the second of two known on-ramps to Steadytown.
As I understand it: on some visit back to 25.10.1 (#5-6) there might have been a new item in the pop-up menu? And I overlooked that cue when the opportunity arrived.
Presumably I’d gotten there by signing in and pressing the happy blue button on the dashboard. There was a recommended update, with an encouraging number for only incremental improvements. Presumably I clicked through without stopping here to re-survey the contents of that pop-up again.
I’m not sure how long the window was open between 25.10.1 being tagged GA and 25.10.2 being promoted to those of us waiting to escape EA. (Nor that I suggest it matters, except for the earnest post-mortem.) My Boot Environments show Date Created of 2026-03-05 21:43:42 (25.10.2.1) and 2026-04-16 16:49:38 (25.10.3). Sorry; I’d pruned everything earlier. I presume these are install-dates, not build-dates?
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My User Story would be that we had always intended to be guided stepwise through the builds that you trust. Yes, I happened to reach for a PR-heralded “.0” starting point (and I’d do it again! These are great! Just don’t expect the forum to support them.) This isn’t my first experience with TrueNAS.
But it is someone’s first experience. And IMHO, that doesn’t seem to be the experience that you would intend for them.
Is that fair to say?
FWIW my own knuckleheaded hot take is that whatever random non-nightly build someone starts from, you folks in charge would benefit as much as they would from guiding them through every point-update from where they are until they reach the golden path. 
- No point updates from a GA (/MC) that aren’t also GA (/MC).
- All point updates toward a GA (/MC) in every other case.
Corollary: we daredevils will occasionally reach for an early fast-forward — that’s how you get testing. 
But we too should generally be guided forward through all incremental updates from wherever we are until everybody’s back together on the lighted path. Same as everyone else.
Maybe even don’t prompt testers to hop off of a GA onto a point release? If you think you’re engaged enough to provide feedback, you’re surely engaged enough to know of the new build. Or if you screw up or lose interest, you’ll eventually be prompted back to civilization.
That way, all roads lead back to road. Only impulse off-roading should ever lead to pond. 
I hope that’s constructive. Sorry it’s wordy.
This is not the wurst idea, and could simply be implemented thusly: Implement one additional alert. You already have “software update available” alerts. How about “More conservative upgrade path available” alerts? When whatever release a user is on reaches General, give them an alert that says “You have the option of switching to the General train and remain on well-tested, stable releases only”
Plus the bike-shedding of renaming General to Stable, Early Adopter to Pre-Release, and Download page featuring Stable and Mission Critical prominently.
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Just to add a data point: General is now visible in the Update Profile dropdown on 25.10.3. (Screenshot attached.)
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How about “More conservative upgrade path available” alerts?
This still defaults toward entropy with elaborate opt-in to stability, rather than the other way around. But I’m personally grateful for your thoughtful reply.
Another simple (enterprise-first?) implementation: a newer build of greater-or-equal stability rating is recommended. One of lesser rating only appears as an optional step-down detour.
Payed Enterprise is “safety-first”. Free SCALE/CE purposefully serves as beta testing by the community.
“If it’s free, you are the product.”
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Absolutely! But there are support costs to keeping people underwater who shouldn’t be there. Hence all the frustrated admonishments of those people on the forums, for their poor judgment and irresponsible administration.
The people you want on every lower-quality point build don’t need help learning about them. At least not from the in-product UI.