Unraid 8 Q&A: Fedora, Docker Compose, Plugins, and When You Can Try It

A few weeks ago, we asked the community on Reddit what you wanted to know about Unraid 8, and you gave us plenty to talk about: licensing, Fedora, plugins, Docker Compose, security and, of course, when you’ll be able to try it for yourselves.

Alex Kretzschmar, our Head of Product Marketing, sat down with Eli Bosley, our Head of Product, to work through your top questions. Everything here reflects where things stand today. As development continues, some details may change, and we’ll keep you posted when they do.

Prefer to watch? Here’s the full conversation, with chapters for every topic.

The short version

• Your license carries forward. Every license type and unredeemed activation code stays valid.
• Your containers and VMs should start right up after the upgrade.
• Native Docker Compose support is coming, alongside the templates you already use.
• Plugins are moving to a new, more structured system. Developer docs and tooling are on the way.
• A private alpha is coming soon, with a public beta targeted for early 2027.

Will my license carry forward to Unraid 8?

Yes. Basic, Plus, Pro, Starter, Unleashed and Lifetime licenses all carry forward to Unraid 8, along with any unredeemed activation codes. How licenses and activation codes work isn’t changing.

This was one of the most-asked questions in the Reddit thread, so to be clear: whichever way you joined the Unraid community, your license comes with you.

Why are you moving to Fedora?

We’re building Unraid 8 on Universal Blue’s uCore, a lightweight, immutable system based on Fedora. That gives us a much larger ecosystem of packages, broader hardware support, and the backing of Red Hat and thousands of open source contributors upstream.

The immutable approach isn’t new for Unraid. Tom built the original system around that idea some 20 years ago, before immutable Linux was cool. We’re carrying it forward, with the benefit of everything happening in the Fedora and Universal Blue communities.

For your server, that means:

• Better hardware compatibility, with NVIDIA drivers shipped as part of the OS image and ZFS built in
• Faster boot times. Eli’s test system went from three or four minutes to under 30 seconds. Your hardware will have its say, but it’s a lovely improvement.
• More frequent updates, built on a much larger upstream community

Will I be able to choose my kernel?

That’s the plan. We want to offer a choice between a long-term support kernel and newer kernels, so you can pick what suits your hardware and how you use your server. If you like adding the latest kit to a build, a newer kernel could be particularly useful. If your server is exactly how you like it, the LTS option will be there.

We’re also working on:

• Optional Secure Boot support, which protects against malware that tries to embed itself at the boot layer
• Snapshot-based updates, so you can roll back to a previous version at boot if you need to

What’s changing for plugins?

Plugins have been a huge part of Unraid’s story, and in Unraid 8 they’re moving to a new system that gives developers clearer, more structured ways to extend the product.

A developer will be able to describe what their plugin needs to do, whether that’s adding to a page, managing a container or providing a web service. Tools and documentation will support them along the way. During installation, users will see what a plugin does and the permissions it asks for, before they agree to it.

We’re using the same system to build parts of Unraid itself. That means the examples available to developers will be real, working code that we actively maintain and ship.

Some of the most popular plugin features are being built directly into Unraid 8. Existing plugins will need to be adapted for the new system, and helping developers through that transition is a big part of the work.

I develop a plugin. How can I get involved?

We’ll be reaching out to plugin developers directly in the coming weeks to talk about your plugin and what the move to Unraid 8 means for it.

The community has contributed so much to Unraid over the years. We want everyone who has built for Unraid to keep enjoying it, and to feel they can keep contributing.

What will upgrading look like for my containers and VMs?

Our goal is for upgrading to feel like any other Unraid update: click update, and your existing containers and virtual machines start up on Unraid 8 just as you’d expect.

Because plugins are moving to a new system, checking plugin compatibility will be part of preparing for the upgrade, and we’ll share guidance as development progresses.

On the VM side, we’re building a live editor that shows the interface and the XML side by side, so you can see how a change in one appears in the other. If you like getting into the details of your VM configuration, that should make the whole process much more convenient.

How will Docker Compose work alongside existing templates?

Native Docker Compose support is coming to Unraid 8, and your existing container templates will keep working alongside it. Use whichever approach suits you, including a mix of the two. Nobody will be forced to migrate.

There’s a nice bit of history here: Unraid’s XML-based container templates actually predate Docker Compose. Unraid built its own solution before Compose existed.

These days, most self-hosted apps on GitHub ship with a Compose file, so we want bringing an app into Unraid to be as simple as pasting that configuration in.

This one is a favourite for Alex. He uses Compose extensively and is looking forward to having it built right into Unraid.

What security improvements are coming?

Security threats are growing fast, so we’re adopting established Fedora patterns that give each process only the access it needs:

• Docker containers won’t run as root by default
• Virtual machines run under a dedicated QEMU user, so a vulnerability in one is far less able to affect the rest of your server
• The Unraid 8 interface will help you fix permissions if anything needs adjusting

We’re also laying the groundwork for optional SELinux support in a release after 8.0, for anyone who wants to lock their server down further. And building on Fedora means we can ship security updates more often.

What about OIDC, two-factor authentication, and passkeys?

Unraid 8 is planned to support OIDC at launch. We’re also exploring how that login could protect apps running on your server, so you could use your Unraid login in more places.

To make that possible, we’re moving to Traefik as our reverse proxy, which gives us more flexibility in how we bring these systems together.

Passkeys and other authentication options are on our roadmap, with some being considered for releases like 8.1 or 8.2. We’ll share more as those plans take shape.

Will there be options for extra packages, like NerdPack and NerdTools?

We’re still working through how additional packages will fit into Unraid 8, and we don’t have a final answer yet.

For most tools, containers will be the recommended approach. We’re also keeping a much wider set of packages from uCore, so more will be available out of the box for scripting and working with your server, with things like Git and Python included.

Alex has been running command-line tools in containers for years, and the idea goes a long way. You could put your own version of ls in a container, give it an alias, and have it start whenever you run the command, if that sounds like your kind of afternoon.

What can we expect from the new UI?

A lot of the work centres on giving you the information you need, when you need it.

Drive management is a good example. A failed drive is stressful, so we’re building guided workflows for tasks like replacing and upgrading drives. You’ll see a “replace failed drive” button that walks you through each step, from removing the old drive to rebuilding parity.

SpaceInvader One’s videos have helped so many of us get more from our servers over the years. Building more of that guidance into Unraid itself follows the same spirit.

Nothing you can do in Unraid 7 is going away. Advanced options will still be there, tucked into advanced menus, alongside sensible defaults for everyday use.

How are you making sure Unraid 8 is ready?

We’ve built a dedicated quality team and an extensive automated testing pipeline. It covers everything from rebuilding parity after a drive swap to installing an app from Community Applications and confirming it starts with the right storage.

Every release has to pass the full test suite and QA review before it ships. We want moving to Unraid 8 to feel like a natural evolution of the server you already know, just with a lot more to explore.

So, when can I try it?

• Private alpha: coming soon, for a smaller group of testers
• Public beta: targeted for early 2027
• Stable release: timing depends on what we learn from the alpha and beta

There’s a lot here the team is looking forward to: native Compose support, more kernel choice as new hardware arrives, and a whole lot more.

We’ll keep sharing progress through State of 8, our regular series of updates as everything comes together.