Comparison between Univention and NethServer

Can you pleaaase add Univention Corporate Server to the comparison matrix??

Sorry not me, does anyone of you know it?

I donā€™t know a lot about Univention, but when I compare Univention to NethServer, the two things I remark and scare me is

  1. Univention work with license and appear to be free just for
    personal use;
  2. I didā€™nt find a way to install Univention over
    Debian or Ubuntu;
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Iā€™ve already installed it on a small home server but i couldnā€™t find a web server module or an IPS module and wanted to know if those modules can be added or not.

Are you speaking about Univention? Please ask to their support channels :slight_smile:
If your question itā€™s related to NethServer, take a look at the software center (webserver is under shared folder module)

I sent them an email but no reply yet.
and i want to compare between Univention and NethServer .
How hard is that ?!!

Very hard, because Univention Server works with Samba 4.

I am also interested to this comparison. No one switching from ucs to ns?

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Wow, this is a quite old (very old I would say) topic :open_mouth: but as Iā€™ve been informed about it, perhaps is it worth to add some comments here.

For some customers Iā€™m using UCS (Univention). I canā€™t yet compare bits and bytes with Nethserver because I donā€™t know it very well, discovering it basically.

Obviously both have similar features but they do differ, IMHO, in term of target:

  • Nethserver, as I perceive it, is an UTM, all-in-one-box machine aiming to provide all services from same hardware.
  • UCS is quite close but do not intend to handle some network aspects. This server is more competing against what would be a Windows DC with additional services installed on it. It really acts as Windows DC, with DNS, DHCP, KDC relying on AD like directory based on Samba 4, including server to server replication. On the other hand, it doesnā€™t cover firewalling, doesnā€™t aim at acting as VPN server, well to make it short, definitely not ā€œall-in-oneā€ on the infrastructure (network) side.

In order to compare shared features, I need to install Nethserver and get used to play with it before I can make any comment. Some time later, for sure :wink:

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@Christian
Welcome my friend! It is absolutely great to see you here.
As you browse through these forums, you will notice that one of the biggest differences between Univention and NethServer is the community. At Univention it is (last time I checked anyway) next to non existent.

With NS 7 we aim to add Samba4+Kerberos to the services and this will bring the functionality closer to a Windows AD server, and probably closer to Univention functionality. Although I can not tell exactly what it would take since I am not an LDAP/AD/Samba4 expert as you areā€¦ :slight_smile:

With Samba4 coming I would love to hear your input on this!

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16 posts were split to a new topic: Talking about Samba4 and LDAP

So, if we improve the Samba part we can align our project with Univention with the All-In-One plus, am I understanding correctly?

[quote=ā€œalefattorini, post:12, topic:690, full:trueā€]
So, if we improve the Samba part we can align our project with Univention with the All-In-One plus, am I understanding correctly?[/quote]

:relaxed:

I would not jump that fast to this conclusion as Iā€™ve no real experience with Nethserver yet but for sure, someone comparing, today, UCS and Nethserver features and having Windows Domain capability among other criteria in its decision matrix with need to access LDAP may look at UCS as more mature product able to transparently (from end-user and admin view point) offer both AD and LDAP

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Sure, probably UCS as AD is more mature as for now, but I hope we can have the same features as soon as possible.

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Hi everyone,

I am working at Univention in Bremen. Germany.

We are happy to see you compare Univention Corporate Server (UCS) with such a great project like Nethserver. With luck I can help clarifying some things about UCS. I will comment on specific topics below.

Not quite. There is also the UCS Core Edition, which can be use for a small business company, with trained administrator.
The UCS Core Edition provides an unlimited and free License, which differs from the fact, that no support ( email/phone or web form) is included. And you will have to upgrade your system up to the following six months after the release of a new UCS version.

Youā€˜re right. Furthermore UCS provides the function to build up an Active Directory connection with a Windows DC. The Active Directory provides 2 options to configure your UCS system.
The first option is, to configure UCS as part of the Windows AD domain. UCS offers the possibility of expanding an existing Active Directory domain with all the functions of UCS without making changes to the AD domain.
The second option is to synchronize the Active Directory with your UCS domain. This allows both unidirectional and bidirectional synchronization and ensures smooth, parallel operation of Microsoft Windows and UCS environments without considerable administrative efforts. In addition, it is also possible to synchronize multiple Microsoft Windows domains in parallel.

Here some links to the last documentation and other scenarios where UCS focuses on:
https://docs.software-univention.de/en/ucs4.1.html

I hope it helps with your comparison.

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And donā€™t forget the Univention App Center, which allows you to easily extend the functionality of Univention with apps such as OwnCloud and this awesome groupware with videoconferencing functionality named Kopano.

Disclaimer: I work at Kopano, am building its Univention integration and am a regular visitor to the Univention forum. :wink:

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Iā€™m really amazed (in a good way) that people from two other projects are helping the community of another project.
Faith in humanity and open source collaboration restored. :slight_smile:

Thank you Daniel and Felix for your contribution.

Please share more if you feel like or ask if you have questions.
Even though both NS and Univention are in the same market they do not exclude each other.

Iā€™ve used Univention right after Zentyal was becoming ā€œunusableā€ and it was a good product.

It did not fulfill all my needs and as such Iā€™ve started using NS, but as Iā€™ve sayed, they do not exclude each other and further more, both servers are up and running. Each doing a different job.

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Interesting discussion here :relaxed:
That cool :+1:

Indeed both UCS and NS and BTW any other solution wiling to include Samba 4 will, perhaps with some technical differences inside either emulate Win DC or allow Microsoft server to join as member of emulated domain.

UCS will provide some services NS doesnā€™t provide yet (perhapsā€¦ Iā€™ll tell you more once my platform is up and running).
On the other hand NS offers more network related features.

I donā€™t think one could definitely state that one fits better than the other everywhere. I share Ctekā€™s comment on this.

What may make a real difference it admin profile targeted by each solution. There is a balance between very powerful but more complex interface and simple and easy interface but less flexibility.
I donā€™t really know where NS stands. UCS is quite simple (from GUI viewpoint) but does not permit, as far as I know, stuff like DNS entries that are not A or CNAME records through GUI. E.g.TXT record.

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Thank you Christian for taking the time to try UCS.

Yes. I would say UCS focuses more at the core of the IT (identities, business applications, workstations, VMs, etc.) than at the gateway/UTM side. UCS also assumes the IT infrastructure is spread in multiple geographical locations, and so itā€™s prepared to divide tasks among several UCS server roles, each part of the UCS domain.

https://docs.software-univention.de/manual-4.1.html#introduction:Domain_concept

The default menu does offer TXT. See image. New functionality in being added to the Web interface with each release.

More powerful interfaces are also available. univention-directory-manager (udm) in the command line for example. In the end you can always modify the designated local configuration files directly or even extend the existing templates. That is the nice thing about open source :wink:

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Welcome here @do_ucs @fbartels and thanks for jumping in this discussion, weā€™re competitor but as @Ctek said open source is great for its culture of sharing and collaboration, so Iā€™m more than happy to see this and thanks for your compliments!
As you read above in the discussion we just tried to help our people to better understand NethServer comparing it with other products,
I will more than happy to meet you at fosdem next year :slight_smile: