Should you install a different OS on your pre-built NAS?

With their affordable price tags, efficient power usage, and simple setup procedures, pre-built Network Attached Storage servers have plenty of advantages over their self-assembled counterparts. That said, the first-party distributions included with most pre-built NAS enclosures are often their most hated aspect. Although proprietary distros have become a lot more useful over the last couple of years, you could end up with a NAS OS that has broken features, an overly complex UI, and stability issues.

If you’re dissatisfied with your first-party NAS OS, you can replace it with a better operating system, though there are certain advantages and disadvantages you should be aware of before switching to a different distribution on your pre-built storage server.

You could end up voiding your warranty with a custom OS

And you’ll lose access to the companion apps as well

Considering how easy it is to modify the BIOS on your NAS to boot from another operating system, you’d think manufacturers would have some ways to deter you from replacing their first-party distros. Well, you’d be right if you thought that, as many NAS manufacturers void your server’s warranty and can stop providing technical support should you modify the firmware. As such, you might be better off with the default operating system if you’re worried about losing warranty service for your painstakingly bought NAS server.

Likewise, you won’t be able to access the companion applications for your NAS solution once you replace its official OS. Of course, you could always look into containerized solutions that achieve the same result, but if your workloads are centered around the applications that rely on the proprietary NAS distribution, you might want to give up on the custom OS idea.

Then there’s the fact that you’ll need a USB port and a functional HDMI socket on your NAS. That’s because you’ll have to connect a keyboard and a monitor to the NAS to access the BIOS. Likewise, you’ll need another USB port to plug the bootable drive containing the custom OS files, though you can circumvent that requirement with a PXE server.

NAS-centric operating systems are more flexible

And are often straight-up better than proprietary distros in many cases

Let’s say your pre-built NAS has a somewhat decent operating system. However, even the most amazing first-party distributions can’t hold a candle to the feature-laden NAS-centric operating systems. TrueNAS Scale, Unraid, Rockstor, and OpenMediaVault bring their own set of features to the table, and you’ll be surprised at how useful a dedicated NAS OS can be if you haven’t used one before. Heck, hardcore Linux enthusiasts can install their favorite distribution on the NAS and arm it with the right set of packages to build a reliable file-sharing and data archival server.

Then you’ve got the whole EOL timeline shenanigans, where NAS manufacturers stop releasing new updates for older models. If your storage enclosure is well past the EOL date, there’s no reason to remain on the older version of the proprietary OS, especially when you’ve got FOSS operating systems that keep receiving updates for years without forcing you to drop a fortune on a new NAS.

If you’re worried about your outdated NAS becoming unresponsive on anything besides the first-party distro, you can go for OpenMediaVault instead of TrueNAS Scale or Unraid. As someone who has configured OMV on everything from Arm SBCs and RISC-V motherboards to lightweight virtual machines, I can confirm that it’s the perfect upgrade for a low-end NAS with an unstable proprietary distro.

Alternatively, you can transform the NAS into a home server

Even a prebuilt NAS can turn into a solid Proxmox machine

Most NAS systems, be it a budget-friendly device or a high-end storage server, have enough horsepower to double as killer self-hosting workstations. Although the official NAS OS that ships with your pre-built chassis may support Docker, there are times when you might want to look into other container runtimes. Maybe you prefer the secure nature of Podman, or perhaps you’re a developer who wants a taste of LXC-powered services.

You could technically deploy a virtual machine to tinker with different container runtimes, but low-end NAS solutions may lack the horsepower to deliver a responsive experience in virtualization projects. Not to mention, certain first-party distributions like TOS make the virtual machine deployment process a nightmare with their weird hypervisors (I’m looking at you, phpVirtualBox). Running a bare-metal Linux distribution on your NAS can help you tinker with a range of containerization tools – all while letting you configure SMB shares, leverage different file systems for your NAS, and set up iSCSI target volumes (if you’re into block storage setups).

In case your NAS features more than 4 CPU cores and 8GB RAM, you can even repurpose it as a reliable server for virtualization projects. Proxmox is my preferred home server platform, as it’s light enough to run on most machines while providing a rich set of features and killer performance in VMs and LXCs. Even if you’ve already got a dedicated home lab, you can prevent old NAS units from gathering dust by turning them into secondary cluster nodes – or even a Proxmox Backup Server node to safeguard your essential virtual guests from your experiments.

Would you take the plunge into the world of custom NAS operating systems?

Personally, most of the NAS units I’ve reviewed over the last year have reliable proprietary distributions with a decent set of features. But I’d be lying if I said I don’t prefer a dedicated NAS OS over the official distros. After all, I wouldn’t get the superior ZFS support, multiple network shares, and high-end RAID configurations on first-party distros. Plus, I can always upgrade to the latest version of my custom NAS/home server OS without worrying about the NAS manufacturer restricting updates in the future.

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