If I had to guess, never having used it myself, is that it has a decent UI that simplifies sometimes complicated operations and it has been around seemingly forever.
this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2025
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I think it's neat. It has tons guides and plugins to do pretty much anything. Other solutions can be lacking in documentation. One big plus is the way you can just throw in whatever drives you've got laying around and not have to worry about them matching or anything. Is it the best performing? Probably not but it doesn't need to be. For me it just hosts files and a bunch of fairly lightweight services.
Because it is beginner friendly and it has a lifetime license I guess and it is not yet enshittified.
I think because it's got a black background in the UI and it makes people feel like hackers. OpenMediaVault's choice of white and light blue is way less 1337.
I just tinkered a bit with zimaos and I was pretty impressed. if it keeps getting updated I can see unraid getting a serious competitor. but yes the question still stands why there isn't something similar beginner friendly in the opensource space.
It is? Where? Please don't say Reddit as that is full of advertisement bots pretending to be regular users.
I am more surprised by how popular Proxmox seems to be here, which is really just adding a lot of unnecessary complexity, but I guess the GUI comments others here shared applies to it as well.
I am more surprised by how popular Proxmox seems to be here, which is really just adding a lot of unnecessary complexity
I switched to Proxmox for one reason: PBS. As far as I know there is no match with plain KVM. Proxmox also makes setting up and maintaining a high-availability setup very easy, which is a nice bonus.
In this very community, I've seen plenty of Unraid posts, as much as I do on Reddit.
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