On your point about it being “easy” to install containers via the app interface, are there any guidelines for how to configure them when all you’ve got for reference is a Docker Compose file?

A lot of stuff matches 1:1, but there are often oddities here and there, and I’m still not entirely sure of the correct way to configure storage. Some guides say to create datasets in the pool and then configure some to use the “apps” preset, while others should use “generic.” Others say to just use the automatic permissions checkbox, and others still tell you to check the “Use ACL” box. When I haven’t found a guide, I just created the datasets manually, set them to “apps,” and so far it has worked.

And when I want to use Docker containers normally, I’ve been advised against it. There used to be something called “jails,” but that was deprecated with the new Containers tab in the GUI. Apparently, that’s being dropped again for some reason, but the jails are still deprecated, and any time I search for how to use Docker Compose, I get so much conflicting info. Some say to just run docker compose as you would on a regular server via the command line, while others say that could break the system and tell me to just use VMs instead, and it’s all a mess.

The SMART stuff I mentioned was definitely my lesser worry, just a mild annoyance that tipped me over to consider switching, but the apps feel like I’m learning a whole new abstraction layer instead of just writing a Docker Compose file with input fields. Maybe that’s just a me problem though and I’m simply refusing to adapt, I am really not sure.

Huh, sound pretty simple overall. I was mostly afraid I was missing some key features that would be painful to set up and were needed for a NAS, but apart from the filesystem and SMART tools, this isn’t much less setup than I had to do with TrueNAS. Thanks!