Please for gods sake dont use CasaOS

It is a For-profit without any means of Generating income (unlike Truenas or Suse which have a paid enterprise version)
Since there is no way of making money, it is apparent they will pull a Plex and Enshittify once they have the noobs on board
At least it uses docker, so you can export the images, but who knows when this will change
It uses discord as forum. They cant even get themselves to use their own OS to install a matrix server on there.
They are not even Private. Their FAQ literally says „They will try to limit data collection“

You want to use some shitty OS by some shitty company? Go sign your soul to Windows Server you lobotomite

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

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Casaos is a Chinese commercial "loss leader" software added to tons of Chinese brands. It is not intended to make money by itself, it is intended to sell more home nas market gear like zimaboards.
It's also not an os, despite its claims and confusing terms on Wikipedia.
Last, casaos sends telemetry to Chinese IPs, a fair amount more than most software, based on what I saw with tcpdump alone.
I'm not sure how casaos made its way into the "open source os" space, but none of what you're saying is new.

I don't use CasaOS, I don't know the use case, or anything else, but the only right answer to "will try to limit data collection" is Fuck you.
- Go ahead, keep on masturbating. I'll try to turn my camcorder off. Shhh shh sh, there there. 🫣

Linux allows for freedom. There is room for For-Profit distro's that have data collection and whatever.
- Yes, but most users will exercise their freedom to ignore such distros.
  
  Thats fine???
  
  So?

shit like this makes TEMPLE OS look better every day lol

What do you have against the project and the people behind it? It sounds personal.
There are plenty of non-commercial Linux distributions. Some managed better than others. Some generic, some with niches. OpenWRT is a favourite of mine.
- Its my experience with server software for beginners in general, which gets my enshittification senses tingling. I just dont trust in a company providing a hell of a service (like, getting tens if not hundreds of docker images to work with the click of a button) for free.
  With Truenas I know that their community branch is an ad for their enterprise service because no single person will key thousands for the caliber of support their enterprise has, so they make their money by offering cloud services. So that explains how it is still feasable for them to give me their dataset and UI and everything frontend for free.
  But with Casa, I just dont know where the money comes from. I dont see how they can keep up their operations and make a profit with this kind of effort. So I can only assume that many non essential services will be put behind a paywall.
  And if they do it, I still know that they use docker and ZFS, and I can spend a day or 2 learning how to set up a software raid and an ssd as a ZFS buffer for it, and everything else i‘ve set up with their OS.
  But thats the problem: Beginners dont know. Its like with the Iphone: If the user dosent learn how to deploy a docker instance from a compose file themselves, they will be bound to that frontend and all the enshittification that happens to it.
  Therefore I would like it way more if Selfhosting was more like the AUR. First learn how the Process of pulling an image and makepkg‘ing works firsthand, then you can use the frontend like yay. Not the other way around.
  But if no one learns how to do something the old fashioned way and relies on a frontend for everything, at some point the company behind the frontend will vendor lock everyone into their system, since there is no competition anyway
  
  You couldn't figure out how they make money? This took me like 1 minute to find.
  https://www.zimaspace.com/
  
  Beginners will always gravitate to what is easier.
  The upstream tools (Docker in this case) must orient themselves more towards the newbies, not only the pros, if we want to see the progress here.
  Personally, as a non-IT guy, I find myself fighting uphill battles every time I want to do something seemingly simple, because the basic tools we're offered are not made with common folk in mind. And I'm sort of an enthusiast - most people just won't bother if it's not plug&play, they don't have time and energy to figure everything out.

very sus that its a cloud os.

isnt it just Ubuntu+Docker and a somewhat pleasant frontend web page?

So you're basically saying "I don't have any proof of any of this, but I'm scared so I'm scaring others as well".
Your first point makes zero sense: it can't be both "for profit" and have "no means of generating income".
Their way of generating income is the reason they created the distro/OS in the first place: selling hardware. To my knowledge, they wanted to ship their mini servers (ZimaBoard) and later NAS-like devices (ZimaCube I think?) with an easy to use OS that can do all basic home server tasks. That didn't exist, so they made one. They didn't need to make money from the OS, it's a catalyst to bring able to sell (more) hardware. I personally think that is a great way to use Linux as a company and contribute to the wider ecosystem, why does it scare you so much? They could've closed this of much more, but made it for available to everyone, on any hardware.
From what I heard, they did achieve their design goals. It's a bit simplistic for me personally, but probably great for a beginner.
I get that enshittyfication is everywhere these days, but maybe don't try to stop people from using things that haven't actually seen ANY yet, just because they might? With no indication that they will, either.
4&5 might be fair points though, I for know enough about the details.
- Your first point makes zero sense: it can’t be both “for profit” and have “no means of generating income”.
  Are you for real? The entire concept of Enshittification hinges on the real fact that most internet services start out with a net negative "profit" and are kept alive through large injections of VC capital. This allows them to offer the service for free or close to free to gain a massive user base, which they then leverage for profit later on through measures that make the service worse for consumers. The entire reason Mastodon, Lemmy, and the federated social network exist is because of this contradiction.
  
  Yep, crack economics. Give product out for free until they're dependent, then exploit them.
- It also isn't an operating system. It's an application that you install on an existing OS.
  Could the company decide to lock it to only their hardware? Probably. Could they take money in exchange for preferred listings? Yup.
  And if it gets shitty, like OP said, it is just a layer on top of Docker. You can leave it.
  CasaOS was key in easing me into the world of Docker. I understand general use enough to be comfortable installing without Casa and jumping into compose files and such. But I'll still check out the store for apps sometimes just for ease of use.
  Whole post is just a rant against something that OP apparently doesn't know anything about.
- The phrase "for profit" is probably referring to the corporation's structure. It isn't related to whether the corporation is currently profitable.
- I know my huge dick is uncomfortable in your mouth. I promise I'm not trying to cum, really this is an artistic kind of thing. There are so many other reasons I could be doing this. It's potentially good for your oral health as well, you should be thanking me. I'm perfectly innocent, I swear. Swallow now please.

I ended up with a device that shipped with it and replace it with Yunohost for a similarly beginner friendly experience that, so far, seems a whole lot more open.

No, this is a TED talk.

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