Best NAS Operating Systems for a Home Lab
The system underneath your apps. Unraid vs TrueNAS vs HexOS, openmediavault, ZimaOS, FygoOS and MOS: each turns a PC, mini PC or NAS box into storage you control, and they differ in how they pool drives, what they boot from, and whether you pay for a licence.
Unraid
Pool drives of different sizes behind one or two parity disks, then run Docker apps and VMs from a friendly web UI.
TrueNAS
Free, open-source NAS OS built around ZFS, with snapshots, replication and Docker apps on a Debian base.
HexOS
A guided, beginner-friendly layer on top of TrueNAS, managed from an online dashboard instead of ZFS settings.
ZimaOS
A light NAS OS from IceWhale with a one-click app store, made for ZimaBoard and ZimaCube but installable on most x86 PCs.
openmediavault
Free, Debian-based NAS with SMB/NFS shares, plugins and Docker via Compose – light enough for a Raspberry Pi.
FygoOS
A newer, closed-source NAS OS for x86 PCs and Rockchip boards, with ext4, Btrfs or ZFS volumes, Docker, VMs and AI photo search built in.
MOS
A free, Devuan-based NAS OS that boots from USB and pools mixed drives with mergerfs, SnapRAID or a parity array, plus Docker, LXC and VMs.