I can’t agree here.
Sure, it could be worse, and iX did the right thing in putting it out of its (and our) misery. And yes, they’ve improved since then, though that bar is on the floor and you’d need a shovel to get under it.
They are–we just don’t know which ones they will be. Nor do users know what those releases might break. What’s important is that they’re able to consistently push out good and stable updates, and I don’t think that’s been shown–rather to the contrary, I believe.
“So just stay on 24.10,” some people say. But there are a few problems with that plan:
- iX aggressively EOLs earlier releases.
- It’s rare to see so much as a point release for any version prior to the current major release, and it’s unpredictable whether and when these will occur. If you want security patches and bug fixes, you’d better be on the current release.
- Why they then recommend an unsupported release for “general use” on their software status page is a mystery.
- iX’ promises of extended support (when they make them) can’t be trusted.
- Shortly before the release of 24.10, iX uncharacteristically announced that 24.04 would be supported for at least a year following the release of 24.10. But as we saw earlier this year, that promise carried a hidden caveat that app migration would stop working after June 1 of this year. And we’ve already seen at least one user here who was bitten by this.
- iX’ messaging is decidedly mixed.
- Their software status page, linked up-thread, doesn’t (at this writing) recommend 25.04.1 for anybody, and recommends the 25 series in its entirety only for early adopters and testers. Morgan says 25.04.1 is appropriate for Enterprise use. Which is it? Their answer is word salad.
We’re having this conversation now, I think, because 25.04 removed a virtualization function that was deemed production-ready[1] and replaced it with one that’s marked as “experimental,” obnoxiously reminding you of that fact every time you click anything in that part of the UI. That’s a fail, and that’s obvious to everyone but iX, but it isn’t the first time they’ve done something like this, and I doubt it will be the last.
As I said above, I don’t really care about the schedule as such; what I want is software I can trust. iX aren’t providing that. What’s saving them is that everyone else is even worse.
TrueNAS virtualization features have never been anything like production-ready and I doubt they ever will be. ↩︎