{"slug": "sylve", "name": "Sylve", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 7, "warners": 1, "score": 3.672, "rising": -1.64, "first": "2026-01-21", "latest": "2026-06-25", "why": "It's new-ish, but it looks like a possible sweet spot replacement for both proxmox and TrueNAS", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 6, "neutral": 0, "compare": 1, "warn": 1}, "spark": [0, 0, 1, 0, 2, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "It's new-ish, but it looks like a possible sweet spot replacement for both proxmox and TrueNAS", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "sylve.io", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://sylve.io", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Sylve"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 778894976, "item_id": 48680936, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680936", "by": "sfRattan", "date": "2026-06-25", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's new-ish, but it looks like a possible sweet spot replacement for both proxmox and TrueNAS", "excerpt": "Another proxmox-esque project I've been watching is Sylve, a control plane for FreeBSD that provides a web interface to jails, bhyve VMs, and containers [1]. It's new-ish, but it looks like a possible sweet spot replacement for both proxmox and TrueNAS (which was originally also built on FreeBSD before they switched to Linux IIRC), at least for my homelab-ing use case. Potentially eventually for environments at great", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab virtualization on FreeBSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus"}, {"id": 762967282, "item_id": 47685455, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47685455", "by": "ggm", "date": "2026-04-07", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I looked at Sylve and it had huge potential.", "excerpt": "I don't personally like proxies, intermediaries, but that said they've been entirely normalised by kubernetes/traefik/haproxy type setups. I do find managing the bridge pseudo-devices, and the various bindings, and DHCP/SLAAC a bit painful because I actually don't understand it well. I use bastille, and it seems to \"just work\" and I looked at Sylve and it had huge potential. When I ask for some ELI5 on bridge/net stu", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cells for NetBSD: kernel-enforced, jail-like isolation"}, {"id": 761615988, "item_id": 47600999, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47600999", "by": "xoa", "date": "2026-04-01", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Even at such an early stage Sylve already looks like", "excerpt": "Not sure you'll see this so late but just wanted to say I really appreciate the reply and learning about this project. I've been working to switch myself and various places away from perpetual ESXi licenses as it finally starts really getting old, and while I'm thankful Proxmox exists I've always loved FreeBSD (was kinda bummed when TrueNAS moved from it) and Proxmox can be irksome. Even at such an early stage Sylve ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab"}, {"id": 761317168, "item_id": 47582323, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582323", "by": "xoa", "date": "2026-03-30", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It still looks like a beautiful design", "excerpt": "Too late to edit, but just as a note for anyone else who gets confused by my post: I was not paying careful enough attention and missed/misread the \"backups\" bit in the parent post, completely my fault. As far as I can tell from reading through the (quite pleasant!) documentation [0], Sylve does not (at least for now) support any sort of network storage for direct use as the VM backing store, though as it is FreeBSD ", "context": "", "use_case": "VM hosting on FreeBSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab"}, {"id": 761241472, "item_id": 47577592, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47577592", "by": "whalesalad", "date": "2026-03-30", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Wow, TIL! https://github.com/AlchemillaHQ/Sylve", "excerpt": "Wow, TIL! https://github.com/AlchemillaHQ/Sylve Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo4oD5UON30", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 769261538, "item_id": 48078846, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48078846", "by": "cyberpunk", "date": "2026-05-09", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "couldn't get the network working", "excerpt": "Yep, most of my linuxes are headless -- but I do have a VM which I pass a graphics card through to for games and ai stuff though -- works really well (as long as you don't reboot the VM, it has a hard time attaching to the gfx card the second time for some reason, not looked into it much) sysutils/vm-bhyve makes it quite friendly. I wouldn't use it for work, though, just personal. Work is all enterprisey kubernetes s", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeBSD: Local Privilege Escalation via Execve()"}]}], "who": [{"by": "sfRattan", "context": "homelab user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680936", "date": "2026-06-25"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["homelab virtualization on freebsd", "vm hosting on freebsd", "jail and lxc management ui", "jail and vm management frontend"], "compared": [{"slug": "freebsd", "name": "FreeBSD", "co": 7, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "proxmox", "name": "Proxmox", "co": 6, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "truenas", "name": "TrueNAS", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "bhyve", "name": "bhyve", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 775795104, "item_id": 48487194, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487194", "by": "hansenzhang", "date": "2026-06-11", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "quite rough around the edges", "excerpt": "Very cool to see. I've been vibecoding a side project as well for learning/using the cloud-native geospatial stack (https://sylveapp.com/, quite rough around the edges) that focuses solely on processing and hosting tiles. I'm still working on getting a usable demo for my example map but seeing this helps to refine what I'm working; to focus on hosting/publishing vs visualizing/analysis. It's fun to see all other proj", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "GeoLibre 1.0"}, {"id": 761318609, "item_id": 47582413, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582413", "by": "arch1e", "date": "2026-03-30", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Come next release (v0.3.0) I will definitely integrate it", "excerpt": "It's funny, I love how FreeBSD manages iSCSI even though I have only used it a few times, I put it in my to-do list but never really got around to writing a UI for it. Come next release (v0.3.0) I will definitely integrate it because as your put it's quite necessary to have that as a way to isolate storage from the main system.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab"}, {"id": 761244016, "item_id": 47577751, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47577751", "by": "arch1e", "date": "2026-03-30", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "built something that feels smoother for our workflows", "excerpt": "OP here. It\u2019s less about Sylve doing something Proxmox can\u2019t do, and more about a bunch of QoL improvements that come from us being heavy Proxmox users and building what we felt was missing. A few concrete things: ZFS-first UX: Not just \"ZFS as storage\u201d, but everything built around it. Snapshots, clones, ZVOLs, replication, all cleanly exposed in the UI without dropping to CLI. Simple backups without extra infra: Any", "context": "OP, heavy Proxmox users", "use_case": "VM and jail management on FreeBSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab"}, {"id": 761243169, "item_id": 47577698, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47577698", "by": "arch1e", "date": "2026-03-30", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "you can already run Sylve inside jails", "excerpt": "That\u2019s true, bhyve doesn\u2019t support nested virtualization right now. In practice though, most setups don\u2019t actually need it if you\u2019re running workloads directly on the host. Also, if your goal is testing or simulating clusters, you can already run Sylve inside jails. That gives you multiple isolated \u201cnodes\u201d on a single machine without needing nested virt. We have a guide for it here: https://sylve.io/guides/advanced-t", "context": "", "use_case": "FreeBSD virtualization clustering", "switched_from": "", "story": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab"}, {"id": 761242448, "item_id": 47577653, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47577653", "by": "arch1e", "date": "2026-03-30", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "With Sylve, you rarely need to touch the CLI.", "excerpt": "OP here. One thing we mentioned in the blog but probably didn\u2019t emphasize enough is how deeply ZFS is integrated into the UI. With Sylve, you rarely need to touch the CLI. Snapshots, datasets, ZVOLs, even flashing images directly to ZVOLs, it\u2019s all handled from the UI in a straightforward way. That tight ZFS integration also lets us build more flexible backup workflows. You can back up VMs, jails, or entire datasets ", "context": "", "use_case": "ZFS-centric VM management", "switched_from": "", "story": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab"}, {"id": 761002592, "item_id": 47562662, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562662", "by": "arch1e", "date": "2026-03-29", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Sylve with Svelte stays smooth even on large clusters", "excerpt": "I would've given up on this project without Svelte 5! It\u2019s so hard to justify React after using it. Proxmox always felt sluggish, but Sylve with Svelte stays smooth even on large clusters. DX is also much better. We started on Svelte 4 but moved early to 5 for things like runes. Jails are great if your packages are in ports, and if not, Linux jails work well too: https://sylve.io/guides/deployments/rocky-linux-jail/,", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Sylve \u2013 Proxmox Alternative by FreeBSD"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47553910", "title": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab", "mentions": 7}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48679385", "title": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47557392", "title": "Sylve \u2013 Proxmox Alternative by FreeBSD", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48479852", "title": "GeoLibre 1.0", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48077971", "title": "FreeBSD: Local Privilege Escalation via Execve()", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680532", "title": "Cells for NetBSD: kernel-enforced, jail-like isolation", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-05": {"warn": 1}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 778920640, "item_id": 48682540, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48682540", "by": "itchingsphynx", "date": "2026-06-25", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "How does Sylve compare to Webmin", "excerpt": "How does Sylve compare to Webmin [1]? [1]: https://docs.vultr.com/how-to-install-webmin-on-freebsd-14-0", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus"}, {"id": 778894976, "item_id": 48680936, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680936", "by": "sfRattan", "date": "2026-06-25", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's new-ish, but it looks like a possible sweet spot replacement for both proxmox and TrueNAS", "excerpt": "Another proxmox-esque project I've been watching is Sylve, a control plane for FreeBSD that provides a web interface to jails, bhyve VMs, and containers [1]. It's new-ish, but it looks like a possible sweet spot replacement for both proxmox and TrueNAS (which was originally also built on FreeBSD before they switched to Linux IIRC), at least for my homelab-ing use case. Potentially eventually for environments at great", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab virtualization on FreeBSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus"}, {"id": 769261538, "item_id": 48078846, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48078846", "by": "cyberpunk", "date": "2026-05-09", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "couldn't get the network working", "excerpt": "Yep, most of my linuxes are headless -- but I do have a VM which I pass a graphics card through to for games and ai stuff though -- works really well (as long as you don't reboot the VM, it has a hard time attaching to the gfx card the second time for some reason, not looked into it much) sysutils/vm-bhyve makes it quite friendly. I wouldn't use it for work, though, just personal. Work is all enterprisey kubernetes s", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeBSD: Local Privilege Escalation via Execve()"}, {"id": 762967282, "item_id": 47685455, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47685455", "by": "ggm", "date": "2026-04-07", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I looked at Sylve and it had huge potential.", "excerpt": "I don't personally like proxies, intermediaries, but that said they've been entirely normalised by kubernetes/traefik/haproxy type setups. I do find managing the bridge pseudo-devices, and the various bindings, and DHCP/SLAAC a bit painful because I actually don't understand it well. I use bastille, and it seems to \"just work\" and I looked at Sylve and it had huge potential. When I ask for some ELI5 on bridge/net stu", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cells for NetBSD: kernel-enforced, jail-like isolation"}, {"id": 761615988, "item_id": 47600999, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47600999", "by": "xoa", "date": "2026-04-01", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Even at such an early stage Sylve already looks like", "excerpt": "Not sure you'll see this so late but just wanted to say I really appreciate the reply and learning about this project. I've been working to switch myself and various places away from perpetual ESXi licenses as it finally starts really getting old, and while I'm thankful Proxmox exists I've always loved FreeBSD (was kinda bummed when TrueNAS moved from it) and Proxmox can be irksome. Even at such an early stage Sylve ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab"}, {"id": 761317168, "item_id": 47582323, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582323", "by": "xoa", "date": "2026-03-30", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It still looks like a beautiful design", "excerpt": "Too late to edit, but just as a note for anyone else who gets confused by my post: I was not paying careful enough attention and missed/misread the \"backups\" bit in the parent post, completely my fault. As far as I can tell from reading through the (quite pleasant!) documentation [0], Sylve does not (at least for now) support any sort of network storage for direct use as the VM backing store, though as it is FreeBSD ", "context": "", "use_case": "VM hosting on FreeBSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab"}, {"id": 761241472, "item_id": 47577592, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47577592", "by": "whalesalad", "date": "2026-03-30", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Wow, TIL! https://github.com/AlchemillaHQ/Sylve", "excerpt": "Wow, TIL! https://github.com/AlchemillaHQ/Sylve Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo4oD5UON30", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab"}, {"id": 761086992, "item_id": 47567937, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47567937", "by": "arch1e", "date": "2026-03-29", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Sylve makes them really easy to use", "excerpt": "LXCs are pretty similar to jails, and Sylve makes them really easy to use. One nice trick is that you can template a base jail and clone it any number of times straight from the UI, no need to drop into a shell and script it like I used to. Another underrated part of FreeBSD is pkg. It\u2019s often simpler than Linux package management. For example, installing Jellyfin on Debian or Ubuntu means adding a third party repo a", "context": "", "use_case": "Jail and LXC management UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Sylve \u2013 Proxmox Alternative by FreeBSD"}, {"id": 747345841, "item_id": 46709115, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46709115", "by": "fridder", "date": "2026-01-21", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it has an in-progress jail/vm frontend", "excerpt": "not sure if you have given FreeBSD a chance yet and it has an in-progress jail/vm frontend: https://github.com/AlchemillaHQ/Sylve", "context": "", "use_case": "Jail and VM management frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "SmartOS"}]}