The preloaded spyware OS is half baked, horribly unfinished, and also locked to the hardware. You can work around it to install your own OS but they provide zero support and explicitly say it is not supposed to be allowed by ToS while intentionally making it as hard as possible by making the BIOS inaccessible and digitally signed to their own OS. Fuck that.
The crowdfunding fundraiser (where there are zero penalties if things are shipped broken, incomplete or not at all) is super fishy and the non-discount price is astronomical. While the hardware looks nice... Hard, hard pass right now, stinks of vendor lockin and illegal data vacuuming. Do not buy.
Yeah, I've got a bunch of Ugreen hardware (external HDD enclosures, USB hubs, adapters, etc.), but there's no way I'd get their hardware with an OS on it. I don't trust the brand that much.
I did order the 4800+.
I have no need for the Ugreen OS and will replace it.
Every report I have read about say that the hardware looks very good for the (kickstarter) price
Nowhere in that video did it say this. I am all for DIY NAS and I have an Arch-based one at home, but saying this while implying that that's what the source video you linked said is a bit disingenuous.
To be honest, nothing about this UGREEN is any different from any of the other off-the-shelf NAS solutions out there like QNAP, Synology, etc. If you don't trust the UGREEN pre-installed OS, you shouldn't trust any of the other ones either. I am not saying you should, but my point is that this pretty par for the course as far as pre-built NASes go.
Most companies do not provide support if you install a custom OS. That isn't a sign of vendor lock-in, just a matter of keeping support feasible in the long-term, especially since they're relatively new at this. If you want a custom OS, it is far easier and cheaper to just build your own.
Bummer, the formfactor / specs look okay but it's kind of a dead end if I can't just install & use a vanilla Debian OS or similar.
With all the NAS OS options probably Synology has the best one but even there I don't actually want to get locked into that. I doubt this UGOS software can match Synology's let alone Debian.
You can. But you need to circumvent the default settings and deactivate the watchdog in the UEFI.
There are already guides out there by reviewers. Youtube review about the NAS and how they replace the OS (around 11:00min)
QNAP x86, standard uefi! Can run anything. Been running mine with Proxmox, ZFS, Runtipi and others. Easy GUI setup for everything, Runtipi is just clicking add for various things.