Welcome to NethServer Community

Well it’s monday and I still haven’t welcomed all of our new members from the last weeks!
22 newcomers are still waiting for it! :smile:
My fault, I was on vacation but I’m just getting back into the swing of things here.

I can just feel it…this is going to be a great week. How are you all feeling? Had your third coffee yet? Feeling good? Good.

Ok, on with the introductions!
Every week we give our new members an opportunity to introduce themselves to the group.
And we all know how important it is that new members feel welcome in a community and know that we’re all listening. So if you’ve been here for a while, please help us out and comment with a welcome to someone who introduces themselves!
Alrighty… if you’ve joined this group recently, please comment below and tell us:

  1. Who you are
  2. What you’re working on
  3. Your favorite thing to do when you’re not at work

Please introduce yourself:
@alfonsoc @Adam @Provolino72 @lucius @Andrea_Columpsi @Ivan_Aronov @Bluelake @cmonty @wdsharp @mesagh @1111 @JuanJuan @Mauro_Poltronieri @MadOp (who have already introduced himself) @jitkian @Fabio_Wagatsuma @ZenLab @bjhankins @edsondaza @Bhakti_Arpit @Micheal_Quinn @Carlos_Fernandez_S
you can achieve an amazing badge :smile:

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My name is Adam(obviously! :smile:) I work for a small MSP in Florida. During my search for a software router/UTM, I stumbled upon NethServer and couldn’t be happier! It’s refreshing to find something that’s logical and that works.

Ehi Adam, Really happy to have you here!
What do you value most in NethServer? Do you already know any other software UTM? What are your expectations from NethServer?

Over the past few weeks, I did some pretty extensive testing with Untangle, Zentyal, pfSense, and ClearOS. I have also been using SonicWall quite a bit over the past 7 or so years. Untangle is logical and easy to use (maybe because I had used it quite a bit in the past) but it seems like they’re charging for some features that are on my list of requirements:
-Intrusion prevention
-Web filtering by category and URL/domain including https
-WAN failover and load balancing
-Multiple LAN zones
-DHCP server for multiple lan zones and conflict detection
-QoS by port/service or host/ip
The rest of the products I tested seem like they’re pieced together with little thought put into how the features/modules work together. NethServer was a clear winner as soon as I started testing it.

As far as expectations, I’d say they’re limited beyond what I’ve already mentioned. I believe all of the above requirements are met, as long as everything works as it should. I’m mainly just looking for a cost effective UTM/router appliance.

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Good, thanks for your explanation! You might be pretty interested in these comparisons:
NethServer vs ClearOS
Nethserver Firewall vs PFSense
Zentyal vs NethServer comparison matrix

and you can lend a hand to @vhinzsanchez with this

Unfortunately for you we don’t have any Untangle comparison right now, you seem quite expert about that, do you want to challenge with it?

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Hi,
my name is Alfonso, working in a small company of Salerno which develops software and provides system support.
We work primarily in Windows environments (client and server).
For about a year we are looking for an open source to serve as a router, firewall, proxy server, content filtering and email servers. The our customers are small government agencies, schools and businesses that do not have much money to spend.
We examined Zentyal and ClearOS (community versions).
Zentyal seemed the best solution. It has a simple interface and good documentation.
When the last realese have been deprived of many functions, we tried other solutions and found nethserver which immediately proved an excellent solution.
Is packed with many features, has a good interface, it does not require a lot of work for its configuration thanks to the excellent documentation.
Congratulations great job.

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Happy to see you here and welcome among NethServer people.
Nice, another friend from Italy! Feel free to start from here with some suggestions how browse and learn about the community or jumped right into the action.

Since you are new here, this discussion could help:

Please, when you setup Nethserver tell us more about your installation!

Hallo,
there is a new nethserver-user. Write from Germany/Thuringia. Working since 1990 for a little IT-firm. My area of work are little firms with 1…50 employee, most are craft producers.
First years we used Novell-Server, later Windows-NT…SBS20xx.
Privat I used since 2000 LINUX SUSE > ubuntu, DEBIAN, SliTaz, endian, iPFire … From this I build “special-distros” as thin clients for MS-Terminalservers, or linux-boot-sticks for special functions (antivirus, rescue …)
Some of my friends I assured to use linux too - ca.10 persons I think (30…70 years) most of them are satisfied.
I think, that it is advantageous to mix the IT-environment. In MS-windows-world we can find a giant pool of professional software for everyone, in Linux-world we can find effective, small and stable systems to make systems saver and cost-saving. Look at Virtualisation, Firewalls … and now time is ripe for linux-sbs-servers. MS-Servers looking like a big,big dinosaur, with big.big updates. Sometimes I think the user is on world, to nurse the PC, but the goal should be a PC, that make users work & life easier …
Sadly I’m not a programer, only a little bash-scripting - now it’s too late to learn - born in 1953.
That’s all to say in this tread
Bye till next time …

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Hi @Adam, welcome aboard. Its really nice that only recently you have had some experience with the things above. I have tried to create a list…or comparison, which you may want to check and maybe add somethings.

Your experience, knowledge and skills will be valuable to the community and we are also glad that you’ve made it here. As for the features, you can thank our developers on that. I, just most of us, am just a community member (an IT guy with Windows background heavily relying on GUI) who enjoys a lively forum/community who chips in my 2 cents once in a while in whatever I can.

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Hi,
my name is Chong Jit Kian, I am running a small company in Malaysia which provide data and voice network solution to small and medium businesses.
We usually get network products from well known brand and try to integrate them together as a solution and deploy to our customer. Most of the time, the solution consist of 2-3 brands and more than 3 appliances or servers in order to complete an IP-based data an voice network.
I have been looking for a software that consist of functions as a router, unified threat management firewall, directory, email, print, shared file server and PBX (Asterisk) that I can pack into a server and perform a clean and simple deployment to my customer.
There are few open source software that does the same function such as Zentyal and ClearOS and I have decided to give Nethserver a try. I just has some limited knowledge on open source software and linux but the support from the community is excellent and responsive and I know I have made a good choice to start with Nethserver.
I have been testing and learning Nethserver everyday and one day I hope I can help the community back. To the Nethserver team, great job!!

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Ehi welcome aboard man and thanks for this introduction! Which brand are you used until now?
Do you know ClearOS and Zentyal pretty well?

Good to know, You have found what you’re looking for :wink:
Just for the record PBX module is enteprise only.

Let us know if there is anything challenging that you need support with.

Whoa from germany :slight_smile: welcome friend… feel free to ask whatever you want.

Why are you not using linux server for your company services or for your clients? What’s blocking you? Why Novell, NT and SBS?
Did you make any test?

NethServeriannnnnns
It’s Monday again, hope all of your weeks are off to an amazing start!
What are all of you working on this week? Anything the community can help with?

Welcoming all of our new members! We’re 450 members now and the group is growing organically every week :slight_smile:
So help me welcome them:
@FenyX @vfo123 @bui89 @lucianoecunha @marc_angio @drakuel @Alessandro_Lepore @rowihei

If you’re new here, please reply and introduce yourselves. Tell us:

  1. Who are you
  2. What you’re working on
  3. What brings you to NethServer!
  4. what interesting software do you have found lately?

If you don’t have a clue how to start with NethServer this is a good starting point:
Welcome to NethServer Community

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My name is Marco and I’m a 23 years old from Salerno, Italy.
Since 2009 spent my time in research, Pentest and System administration.
One of my current job is the security assessment of “Geecom” an opensource CMS.
In my “SysAdmin life” i work specially with Debian, Ubuntu, and other distro and also work with mikrotik and ubiquiti device.
I also spent my free time on arduino and 3d printers.
I love NethServer foremost because is a point-and-click server administration.
For now I have not tried all, but is very satisfactory.

happy to see you here Marco

As already discussed on twitter it would be nice to have an howto for install Geecom on NethServer! :grimacing:

Good! Do you have any suggestion? Feel free to read and reply to existing topics, this is a good starting point

Hi Everyone, since Alessio asked I guess I have to introduce myself :slight_smile: I currently serve as a CTO of a web development and online marketing company with 30 some employees. My career started in sysadmin, so I still like doing stuff like that. We used Zentyal for a long time, and were actually pretty satisfied with it, but their recent move to drop QoS/Traffic Shaping has made us look for alternatives. So I found out about NethServer. I am currently working on replacing Zentyal in 4 of our offices with Nethserver and see how it goes.

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Ehi friend, welcome aboard! Thanks to having accepted my invite, glad to see you here. Guess you’re the first from Slovenian, hope you don’t feel alone since this place is full of new friends :wink:
Do you have already checked how to start here?

Happy to hear this, please help us to improve this document!

and tell us about your experience replying to the proper topic:

http://ommunity.nethserver.org/t/what-is-the-nethserver-business-model/1437 <- this link in howtostart doesn’t work :wink:

Thanks man, I sorted it out!