Eight.ly OS¶

Eight.ly OS is the product: a bootable Debian 13 (trixie) image (signed kernel 7.x, Secure Boot) with hardware detection, Nova AI, a web terminal, VM and LXC management, full NAS storage, and automatic OS-level updates — all in one Go binary with a React dashboard.

What you get¶

• Bootable image — download the ISO, boot on bare metal or in a VM. Run the setup wizard, done.
• Debian 13 (trixie) base — a Debian-signed kernel 7.x with a Secure Boot netboot chain (shim → grub → kernel), patched and maintained by Imogen Labs
• The App Store — 3,200+ curated app templates across 14 groups, ranked search, one-click deploy in three modes (Standard / Traefik / Traefik + Authelia)
• Nova AI assistant — 41 tools across Docker, Storage, VMs, LXC, System, and File Sharing, for natural language server management
• Web terminal — PTY + tmux with WebGL renderer, clipboard, session persistence, and automatic reconnect
• KVM/QEMU virtual machines — 7-step create wizard, noVNC console, snapshots, templates, cloud-init support
• LXC containers — lightweight container lifecycle management
• SnapRAID + MergerFS, or ZFS — mix any drive sizes with SnapRAID parity + MergerFS pooling, or run a ZFS pool on matched drives. Importing a ZFS pool built on another system is a terminal step today (zpool import); there's no dashboard flow for it yet.
• The Shelver — the cache mover: fast writes land on an SSD tier, swept to the array on your schedule
• Native SMB + NFS file sharing
• EBS backup — client for the Eight.ly Backup Server, included free with your license. Scheduled and manual backups with AES-256-GCM encryption
• Clustering — Breezeway (live migration of a running VM between nodes with zero ports opened) and Rehome (fences a dead node, relocates its workload, brings it home on recovery)
• API keys — eos_ prefixed keys for scripts and mobile connectivity
• Calendar — Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr media releases + NAS events (backup, SnapRAID, mover, SMART)
• Requests — Overseerr/Jellyseerr integration
• Hardware detection — GPU drivers (NVIDIA, Intel Arc, AMD), storage controllers, network cards, UPS, fan control
• Setup wizard on first boot — theme, storage (pool + cache), network, security & auth, backup strategy, monitoring, and one-click Traefik + Authelia deploy, in order
• Featherfall — the self-update that can't brick the box. Click Check for Updates and Featherfall downloads the release, verifies it, swaps the binary and dashboard assets, and rolls back automatically if the post-update health check fails. Changes to the systemd unit, kernel, or Debian packaging still need the ISO installer path.
• Automatic OS-level updates — kernel, security patches, and the rest of the base system, on a scheduled window
• x86-64 (UEFI or legacy BIOS) and arm64 — Linux only; there's no Windows or macOS host version (a Mac can run it in a VM)

Infrastructure view¶

Nova AI¶

Web terminal¶

App Store¶

Who it's for¶

• New builds — you have hardware and want a turnkey NAS + app + VM host without assembling it piece by piece
• First-time NAS users — the setup wizard walks you through pool, parity, and cache; you don't need to know SnapRAID syntax
• People replacing Proxmox, Unraid, or TrueNAS — see the comparison guide
• People who want OS updates handled — kernel and security patches on a scheduled window, managed by Featherfall instead of you remembering to apt upgrade

Install¶

1. Download the ISO from eight.ly/download
2. Write it to a USB drive (Balena Etcher, Rufus, Ventoy, dd) or attach it to a VM
3. Boot the target machine from the USB/ISO. The installer walks you through: disk selection > hostname > network > remote access (SSH, optional) > confirm > install > reboot. Nothing is written to disk until you confirm.
4. On first boot, open the dashboard at http://<the box's IP>:8080 and create your admin account — there's no seeded default login
5. The setup wizard then walks you through: theme, storage (pool + cache), network, security & auth, backup strategy, monitoring, and a one-click Traefik + Authelia deploy (or finish without deploying if you're running locally)

See the Quick Start guide for the full walkthrough.

Requirements¶

Mobile app¶

Eight.ly Mobile has not been released yet. When it ships, it will connect to your server with an API key. Nothing is promised beyond that here — check eight.ly or Discord for the current status.

License¶

See pricing and what a license includes for current pricing, trial terms, and what the license does and doesn't gate.