Welcome to NethServer Community

My name is Ilyas B Arinov, I am from ex-USSR (Republic of Kazakhstan, Astana). CentOS 6 system administrator. A couple of years ago I start migration to CentOS 6. I found NethServer as CentOS-based alternative to famous unstable buggy Zentyal which Ubuntu-based. Today I can’t say much about favorite NethServer parts, it is good concept, but what I definitely don’t like is Web-interface. Now I am trying to achieve understanding how stable Neth now, how feature-rich it is, how can I apply it in my personal projects and maybe I can help to prosper it. Thanks for invitation.

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Hi I’m Clinton,
I’m a Voice & communication Engineer (VOIP & PBX) as well as a network & Linux Support Engineer. I’m from the Durban, South Africa.
I was looking for a replacement system after my own zentyl machine decided to break, and a client was dropped in the lurch by a rip-off company, I found ClearOS, and then NethServer. Everybody thinks NethServer is the Next best thing and better than Winows Server. I just cant wait to see when asterisk is on the interface.

This is one super distro thanks guys

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That’s right! :smiley: Welcome aboard Clinton!

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Hi there,

I’m Alex, from Uruguay (Latin America).

I found NethServer looking for alternatives after reading that Zentyal is not behaving well with its community (esp. dropping/breaking features).

My immediate project is to link to offices and eventually centralizing activity management with the calendar features.

This projects looks 100% promising so far :smile:

Cheers!

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Bienvenido / Welcome

We’re here to help.

regards

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Bienvenido a la comunidad, es excelente tener otro Uruguayo que participe.

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¡Hola amigo, que buena comunidad parece esta :smile: !

Thanks folks, it´s very refreshing to find such a warm community, kudos for that !

Regards
Alex.

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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?