No Investors. No Outside Board. Just Unraid — with CEO Tiffany Jones | Uncast (Part 1 of 2)
The Uncast ShowShow Notes
You’ve used Unraid. Now meet the person running the company behind it. Ed Rawlings and Unraid CEO Tiffany Jones get into what the community actually wants to know — what the company stands for, what's coming to Unraid users soon, and what she'll protect no matter what. This isn't a product update. It's an honest look at the people, the culture, and the independence behind the OS you rely on. Tiffany talks about growing up around Unraid, the four careers that led her to the top job, and how she and her father Tom split the business and the product. She takes the hard questions head-on: the worry that Unraid could drift the way other beloved products have, why the company stays bootstrapped with no investors, what “you own your license” actually means, and where a leaner, more accessible Unraid is headed — without taking anything away from the power users who’ve been here for years. No VC. No private equity. No debt. A perpetual license you own outright. A team largely built from the community it serves. This is what’s behind the product.
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Part 2 will have Unraid creator Tom Mortensen and Unraid Director of Product Eli Bosley reveal what’s next for the product itself. You won't want to miss this one. Subscribe so you don’t miss it!
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Chapters 00:00 – Welcome back: meet Unraid’s CEO (Part 1 of 2) 00:44 – Seeing Unraid for the first time (Tom’s 2005 plasma TV) 02:58 – Film to CEO: the four careers that led here 07:38 – Does Tiffany run Unraid at home? 09:45 – The mission, and what “freedom” really means 12:28 – What Tom does now 15:23 – Battling against enshittification and aligning with users 17:18 – No investors, no debt: staying independent 23:50 – What the license change actually paid for 27:58 – Why Unraid stays a small, lean team 30:05 – Where your bug reports & feature requests go 32:10 – From community to staff: Larry’s story 34:05 – What makes the self-hosting community different 36:50 – Accessible ≠ dumbing it down 39:18 – What Unraid got wrong (and how they fixed it) 43:16 – Goals for the next era (team, UX, AI) 45:28 – Partnerships & the Signature Series (45HomeLab) 50:30 – How to get involved 52:36 – Coming in Part 2: Tom & Eli
What will you build with Unraid? Get Started with Unraid in 15 minutes or less.
More from The Uncast Show
In the October episode of Ed & Stefano Unleashed, we kick things off with the brand new Unraid X4 server, the latest Unraid betas, and a big thank you to ich777. Then we ask a question every home labber should think about: could your family actually use your server if you weren’t around? Ed and Stefano take a close look at the X4, a 4-bay Signature Series server with AV1 transcoding and room for a GPU, and talk through Mover finally preserving hard links in the 7.4.0 beta. The community topic covers documenting your home lab, encryption keys, and making sure your family can still get to photos and important documents without you. Plus two new tools worth trying, Red Kite and Connected Clients. The second half moves into tech news, including Samsung’s AI fridges being bricked by an update, dynamic pricing and supermarket WiFi tracking, LG’s smart TV data collection, running bigger local AI models on your own hardware, and what an OpenAI forum hack teaches us about securing our own self hosted services. Episode Takeaways -The Unraid X4: 4 bays, AV1 transcoding, and space for a GPU, from $1199 -Mover now preserves hard links in Unraid 7.4.0 beta -Thank you ich777 for years of plugins, drivers, and game server containers -Could your family access your server if you weren’t there? -Why you should document your home lab and plan for encryption keys -Red Kite and Connected Clients: two new tools to keep an eye on -Samsung AI fridges bricked by a test firmware update -Dynamic pricing and how free supermarket WiFi is used for tracking -LG smart TVs, data collection, and proxy apps using your internet -Running large local AI models using system RAM and mixture of experts -Perplexity’s new local plus cloud AI stack -OpenAI’s forum hack and why you should segment your home lab networks -Switzerland trials OpenDesk as Europe moves away from Microsoft -Where the Unraid name actually came from Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:37 The New Unraid X4 Signature Series Server 06:44 Unraid 7.3.3 RC2 and 7.4.0 Beta: Mover Preserves Hard Links 08:40 Creator Summit and a Big Thank You to ich777 12:02 Community Topic: Could Your Family Use Your Server Without You? 23:35 Red Kite: A New Monitoring and Kill Switch Container 26:48 Connected Clients Plugin 27:39 Samsung AI Fridges Bricked by an Update 32:40 Dynamic Pricing and Supermarket WiFi Tracking 40:18 LG Smart TVs: Data Collection, Microphones and Proxy Apps 45:55 Qwen, Local AI and Running Bigger Models on Your GPU 50:19 TiVo Ends Commercial Skipping 55:45 Perplexity’s Local and Cloud AI Stack 58:10 OpenAI Forum Hacked Through an Image Upload 1:00:58 Securing Your Home Lab: Docker Networks and IoT VLANs 1:04:49 The Uncola and Where the Unraid Name Came From 1:09:03 Switzerland Trials OpenDesk as Europe Moves Off Microsoft 1:16:14 Happy Story: New Zealand’s Kakapo Population Grows 1:19:10 Wrap UpWhat will you build with Unraid? Get Started with Unraid in 15 minutes or less. The hosts of Ed & Stefano Unleashed are passionate about home servers, open-source tech, and sometimes going off on tangents. The views and opinions expressed on the show are solely those of the hosts and guests and do not reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of Lime Technology, Inc. This show is intended for entertainment and informational purposes only. Listeners are encouraged to do their own research, experiment responsibly, and not hold the hosts accountable for any questionable home lab decisions. Most importantly, enjoy the show! #unraid #selfhosting #homelab
Welcome to the Unraid September Digest 2026 — packed into 5 minutes. Stefano walks through the latest release candidates and betas, a wave of security fixes, a brand new X4 server launch, and the app of the month.
Ed and Stefano explore what’s changing for your home server, unpacking Unraid 8’s move to Fedora, native backups, ZFS snapshots, and Docker Compose integration. What changes, what stays, and where do multiple arrays fit in? We also dive into community apps, build an AI radio with Dead Air, ID birds with BirdNET-Go, and discover gigs via MusicSpider, while tackling cloud outages, digital ownership, and rising RAM prices. Along the way: mixing SAS and SATA drives, a fatal modular PSU cable mistake, Linux migrations, and the occasional tangent.
In this month's Unraid August Digest, we break down the biggest news of the month — the move to a new Fedora-based foundation — plus the Unraid 7.4.0 beta, two new faces on the team, fresh merch, and the best community content from around the web. Read the full August Digest. 📰 THE BIG NEWS: UNRAID 8 Unraid 8 is migrating from Slackware to a modern, Fedora-based foundation built on Universal Blue's uCore. The goal: faster security updates, broader hardware support out of the box, built-in backups, and native Docker Compose — an immutable, image-based OS you can update atomically and roll back in one step. Want in early? Sign up for the Unraid 8 beta waitlist here. 🧪 UNRAID 7.4.0 BETA 1 Now available for testing — a shared task tray for background operations across plugins, Docker, and VMs; multiple custom networks for Docker templates; a Docker memory-limit control in the UI; configurable physical power-button behavior; a flash backup you can download straight to the server with progress tracking; plus storage and web UI fixes, new Realtek Wi-Fi firmware, a kernel update, and security-focused package updates. 👋 NEW TEAM MEMBERS Two roles announced back in June have been filled: Alex Kretzschmar joins as Head of Product Marketing (longtime community member and co-founder of LinuxServer.io), and Scott Schwarz joins as Head of Operations & Automation, bringing 20 years of experience helping companies build to scale. 👕 NEW MERCH The new "Unraid and Chill" tee is here — and all t-shirts are on sale for $20 each while you're there. — CHAPTERS — 0:00 Intro 0:20 The big news: Unraid 8 announced 0:24 Why Unraid 8 is special: moving to Fedora 0:42 What is uCore? (batteries included) :23 Container-first OS: bootc & atomic rollback 1:42 Unraid 8 beta waitlist 1:54 Unraid 7.4.0 beta 1 — what's new 3:06 New team members: Alex & Scott 3:38 New merch: Unraid and Chill 3:49 Community content from around the web 4:01 Wrap-up — LINKS — Full August Digest newsletter: https://newsletter.unraid.net/p/unraid-august-digest-da22 Unraid 8 beta waitlist: https://bit.ly/unraid-beta Unraid forums: https://forums.unraid.net Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/unRAID #Unraid #Unraid8 #SelfHosting #Homelab #NAS #Fedora #Docker #HomeServer What will you build with Unraid? Get Started with Unraid in 15 minutes or less.
Last time you met the CEO. This time, meet the man who started it all and the person building what comes next. In Part 2, Ed sits down with Unraid creator Tom and product director Eli. Tom walks through 20 years of Unraid — from a 2005 hobby project born out of a pile of cheap hard drives, to parity-protected storage, a web GUI built to hide Linux, and the arrival of plugins, Docker, VMs and ZFS. Then Eli lays out what's coming in Unraid 8. What's next: a move to a Fedora base (built on Universal Blue's uCore) for faster security updates and far better hardware support out of the box; native Docker Compose; a built-in backup solution — to the cloud, an S3 bucket, or another Unraid server, with snapshots and full restores; a plugin permission system so you can see exactly what each plugin can touch before you install it; and a cleaner, more consistent interface across the OS, your account, and Community Apps — all without taking anything away from the power users who go deep. Same idea that started it all: your hardware, your data, your choice. Here's to the next 20 years.