NethServer vs ClearOS

Continuing the discussion from Hello, zentyal refugee here, with a couple of questions about ClearOS:

@fasttech you’re and expert now :wink: are you ready to make a comparison? What are the differences? Pros and Cons
@AZChas @transocean @Jim @bsprakash @Asrix you know the topic, would you like to bring your contribution?

Hi,

ClearOS is a really good distro with a long history, so there’s a strong background.
The ClearOS team push mainly the linux distribution as a Gateway/Firewall, wich able to do File Server, Active Directory Server…
When the Nethserver team push the distro as an all in one system, wich able to act as Gateway/Router.

Is sightly different because there`s ClearOS module absent from the Nethserver, I mainly thinking about ads filter…

I must talk about the GUI: the ClearOS has a well polished GUI, very aesthetic, but with a bad ergonomic, for example, the left menu, is a three levels menu with hover/accordeon effect that finally hide information.
The over bad thing, in my opinion, is that in all pageg there’s the information about “vendor” and “support policy” that feel it`s a too comercial product…
And it’s not very clear if ClearOS is RHEL based or CentOS Based, or if it’s a mixed bag…

Nethserver is a community driven distro, the application center is here without being “predominant”.
Nethserver is young as is, but has a “SME Linuxbackgrount” too.
And Nethserver is well assumed CentOS based, so all the Centos valuable documentation work fine with NS. :smile:

centos, for sure

Not exactly, actually they almost rebuild anything.

I guess you mean “everything”

Absolutely! :smiley: ClearOS rebuilds the entire system.

I do agree that ClearOS is polished and have worked great. A lot has compared it to Zentyal and some of their differences have been their respective strength over the other.

BTW, I, too is a refugee from Zentyal. If not for the network adapter I was using, I would have deployed ClearOS then instead of Zentyal because of the more polished GUI and more secure OpenVPN implementation (which you should have a certificate and Username/Password combination). With Zentyal, I was inclined to work (and have been more comfortable with) Ubuntu.

One difference I could think of of NS to ClearOS is that the “collaboration” suite of COS, which is Zarafa, is a paid feature/application add-on. I have previously been following the forum on how it was being tested and integrated (hacked…if the term is right as it was not previously integrated, to work or make it work in ClearOS) by Tim Burgess.

zarafa is a big and beauty piece of code but…

  • but it is an exchange replacement and it mimic exchange in everything, even the (horrible) error codes
  • everything is inside a big blob mysql db
  • it need its own daemons
  • recently they dropped the support to outlook plugin

I’ve tested and used it in the past… fine web ui, but its managemet (think about migration) was a PITA

Those are just points of view, in our case we push an all in one system

Any other ClearOS killing feature? From your point of view?

Netatalk and AFP support :japanese_goblin:

Seriously: the bandwith monitor and network graph are greats, theses are killing features.

Edit: Perhaps a great way to have beautifull graphs in Nethserver: https://facette.io/

1 Like

as I’m trying to replace my clearos server, or at least putting it aside, reducing the services I run on it:

  • I still like the dyndns service
  • the openvpn integration
  • there is a nice picture/photographer-app for sorting photos automatically out a dropbox folder

But the differences between the systems are rather small, from what I see now.
With nethserver I like the system and webconfig being very clear. What I missed with clearos is the easy blacklist installation.
So about ‘all in one’ vs. ‘gateway/firewall’ you can have them with both?

NS is trying to become an all-in-one solution. But as some might suggest, it is preferrable to have the firewall/security package installed on a different servers/machines of those office services like mails, etc. It may be a different distro/solution but ofcourse, NethServer is capable.

1 Like

According to distrowatch
ClearOS is base into Fedora/RedHat
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=clearos

And yes the rebuild everything and anything
So you can’t install ClearOS over CentOS or Fedora’ish server

ClearOS Enterprise is based upon ClearOS Core which is a rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Yes, they push for for selling and support but not as much then Untangle

1 Like

Sorry, but ClearOS is based on CentOS and Redhat:

And the wikipedia page is not old… This page was last modified on 26 April 2015, at 04:11.

Who`s wrong ? Distrowatch or Wikipedia ?

Edit: One more thing:
http://www.unixmen.com/install-clearos-community-edition/

RH and fedora are the same… fedora is RH’s bleeding edge distro, meaning that RH use fedora to test all new features, then, at the decided time, it freeze some packages and releases a new major distro version…

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux

centos’s devs rebuild all RH’s rpms without logos; centos’s rpms are 99.999% binary compatible with RH’s ones… if you buy a RH certified hw, you know that it will be certified for centos to

To make more confusion :

ClearOS Professional is a specialized Linux distribution designed to be a server/gateway for small and distributed organizations. The software is derived from a subset of source code from a general purpose server distribution - Red Hat Enterprise Linux

https://www.clearos.com/resources/documentation/clearos/content:en_us:6_software_repository#private-clearcenter-xyz

they almost rebuild anything.:wink: as @giacomo already said

replace “anything” with “everything” :wink:

ok, pero collectd-web no está mal

The ClearOS 7.1 is done !

And about the Comunity/home/entreprise edition, this to clarify few things:

There is, and will always be a free (as in beer) Community Edition…it’s critical to our business model.

The 30 day window will put all users of Community Edition post install
on the verified repositories that have normally been reserved only for
Professional Edition (eg. paid users).

It allows us to help upgrade anyone who select Community from the
outset, but changes their mind during the first 30 days and wants a
supported product. No upgrade, and all that happens if that you will no
longer be on the verified repositories, and will switch (automatically)
to the repositories that the Community has always been on…eg. first
serve, and acting as the QC group that will help us prevent any updates
that go awry fro reaching our paid customers.

Nothing has changed in that respect.

Make sense?

Cheers,

Ben