I was a long time user of ReadyNAS during RAIDiator 4. And I also tested RAIDiator 5 for a short period.
RAIDiator 4 was ok for its day. That's how many systems looked and worked. A bit clumsy but people had nothing better to compare it to. Netgear's ReadyNAS series was the NAS leader in the beginning - or I should say that the Infrant ReadyNAS that Netgear purchased was the most sought after home NAS.
When Synology arrived, everything changed. They showed that you could have an amazing modern system on a NAS. Most users jumped ship. Netgear then rushed RAIDiator 5 to market. It felt dated from the start. Half-hearted.
BUT, I thought I never would say this; ReadyNAS OS 6 is great. The people who built this really know what they are doing and Netgear should treat them well and continue to polish the system.
These days I think Synology's DSM is a bit slow and slow to manage and very "mouse clicky". And I don't care for the desktop style anymore. ReadyNAS OS 6 on the other hand looks and feels very nice, lean, minimalistic and fast and easy to navigate. Also the overall graphic style works great.
But some areas of OS 6 needs some improvement. Especially help needs better integration and more attention. When some dialog box is visible, you can't press help because it is in the layer below. And the help itself is not as near as well made as Synology's.
The Apps needs more care! They are behind Synology, Qnap and Asustor. Docker is the future, it opens up endless possibilities. The Docker add-on should be native to OS 6, treated with utmost respect, and should always be very close to latest release.
And don't forget the what type of users you have! Don't try to make it to simple. The system should also please more technical users (which are the majority). For instance the start page should of course show memory size and usage! And also Linux branch and kernel version.
Ok. That's all for now. I hope this reaches someone at the ReadyNAS team.
I am a Netgear user since a while now and I got every time fun with the several products I owned or beta tested.
Netgear for me is hardware quality, software stability, but about functionalities/options less innovative in the last years than before... 😐
I observed in the competitors the introduduction (and maintain) of key software functionalities I see in nowaday almost a standard.
In my comparison charts for the my future possible upgrades, I observed that often other company provide the same functionalites for both low and high-end products.
You are going to pay in the execution time.. sure, ok -> you get wat you pay.
And it is fine, this is the rule.
If I remeber correctly, this was also the idea for the ReadyOS 6. One software interface for all.
From my point of view very nice, you need less programming effort, and I am completely with you.
The ideas was beautiful, the implementation a little less.
In my case with the RN214 I feel like pushed in a corner.
Due to the ARM processor, enough powerful 4-core cpu with Plex (software) "transcoding", the catched me up.
However with the new software releases, no one was mantaining the (almost deprecated) optional software anymore.
And here you see that if your machine is a ARM, you are out of the most games.
Actually my readynas can be considered almost a plain SAMBA (NFS or whatever) network storage + Plex Server.
i.e. no video survelling, no photo2, no Cacti [...] anymore
(I could frankly speaking replicate it with a RPI 4 with a 4-bay raid encloser.. with even more functionalities available)
I am a soffering, and I am not alone, for the reduced functionality I have now, in comparison to the beginning...
Do you want really leave the responsibility for the optinal software to the community?
Even without encoraging for keeping updated the software?
I agree with you that it is better to remove deprecated software instead to keep possible security holes.
To overcome that, sometimes people are using third-party software (payed), however it is almost an "one-man show", how long suported?
My opinion is that if you pursuit this way you will loose a lot of (home/pro)-users which will see in the other solutions the most easy/reliable way to get for example a photo album (with AI support).
Or feature not standard available like PHP, SQL, private mailserver, or maybe a IoT controller...
From the mobile software side, I would add that also the smartphone software is a miss here.
The Redycloud Android app is definetely years back in comparison to the concurrents
Unfortunately, Netgear seems to have adopted the same stance as Microsoft: "We know better than you do what you need."
I beg to differ.
I don't need or want auto logoff of the NAS GUI. Some do, but you implemented it in such a way we can't choose. And you have entirely ignored users asking for this to be changed. We should never have had to ask!
I have Eaton's Intellegent Power Protector (IPP) monitoring my UPS, which is far superior to NUT. But every time I reboot my NAS, NUT "grabs" the USB interface and locks out both itself and IPP until I manually disable NUT in the GUI yet again. This is something you added, NUT does not normally auto-configure. I even tried to replace your auto-configure program check_ups_drv with a "do nothing" executable, and the system "fixed" it. Yes, this is atypical. But that's the point. One size does not fit all, so you should give us options. If I disable an UPS, it means I want it disabled until I expressly enable it, not until reboot.
You have also been asked on multiple occasions to add Docker as a part of the OS or as an official app. You even falsely took credit for this being "implemented" when a user developed an app that was undoubtedly overwhelming for most users. Meanwhile, you ignore what it could do to help in the apps arena if it were an official thing.
I'm not jumping ship -- I have too much invested. But I'm also not recommending ReadyNAS to anyone who asks.
