Recently, I switched from TrueNAS Core to TrueNAS SCALE (without any hassle) and don’t regret it ever since. Let’s talk about the reasons why.
Debian-based
TrueNAS SCALE is, contrary to TrueNAS Core, a Debian-based system, which I know much better than the FreeBSD base of TrueNAS Core. Also, Debian has a broader community, thus there are more resources available for this kind of system.
Apps
You can run docker-based apps directly in SCALE in their Kubernetes setup. This makes it much easier to publish custom apps, which is also why there are so many. With custom sources (which are called “Catalogs”) like TrueCharts, there’s much to discover and many helpful apps.
As an example, setting up a Wireguard server on TrueNAS Core is much manual work with jails, network and firewall settings. In TrueNAS SCALE, just install the app “wg-easy” and you’re basically done – including a nice UI for your connected devices.
Jellyfin
Before switching, I tried using Jellyfin to replace my current (minimal) Plex setup. Unfortunately, I quickly ran into issues, in the end I couldn’t watch any local stored video for reasons I didn’t dig into deeper. After the switch to SCALE I just installed the Jellyfin app and everything worked fine.
Slick UI
This is not really a a reason why I switched, but more a reason for why I don’t regret it. While the UI of SCALE is pretty similar to Core, it looks more polished to me and has less weird UI decisions than Core. The dashboard alone with its better configuration options and builtin resource graphs for the network activity is great.