Jorge Salamero, Zentyal systems analyst and developer, will be leading some working sessions at the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) that is currently being held in Oakland (USA), from the 7th of May until the 11th of May.

As an Ubuntu-based server distribution, aimed at small and medium businesses that necessary don’t have high technical knowledge on Linux, Zentyal offers a convenient server solution for Ubuntu community. During the UDS, Zentyal developers will discuss with the Ubuntu community the following goals for Zentyal in the next Ubuntu release 12.10 Quantal Quetzal:

11th of May, Zentyal integration on Edubuntu

9th of May, Graphical interface for Domain Directory management

7th of May, Making Zentyal more Ubuntu ecosystem friendly

7th of May, Zentyal power management

We warmly welcome you to join these working sessions. Moreover, Zentyal Team will be in the San Francisco bay area until the 13th of May. If you are interested in meeting us, please contact on info at zentyal.com or Twitter (@zentyal).

Zentyal Development Team is glad to announce that the Zentyal Community Council has now been officially launched and all interested Zentyal Community members are welcome to join the conversation and get more involved with the Zentyal server project!

What is Zentyal Community Council? The social structures and community process of Zentyal server project are supervised by the Zentyal Community Council. The Community Council approves the creation of new teams or projects, along with team leader appointments. The Council is also responsible for the Code of Conduct and ensuring that community members follow its guidelines.

How can I join? The Zentyal Community Council meets once a month on IRC, in the #zentyal-council channel on the freenode network. The next meeting will take place on the 9th of May, at 22:00 CET. Everyone interested is free to join the meetings, propose topics and volunteer for the different community projects (e.g. currently volunteers for Bug Hunter Squad are wanted).

Jorge Salamero, Zentyal systems analyst and developer, will give a talk at the Linux Open Administration Days (LOAD) that will be held in Antwerp (Belgium) on the 31st of March and 1st of April 2012. The talk entitled “Challenges of Samba 4 and SSO integration” will take place on the 31st of March, within the Python track.

The next stable Zentyal release (Zentyal 3.0) will be published in September 2012 and it will integrate Samba 4, offering a full replacement for Microsoft Active Directory to manage network users and resources. During his talk, Salamero will explain the challenges the Zentyal Development Team has faced when integrating Samba 4 with technologies such as OpenLDAP and Kerberos.

“The biggest challenge of Samba 4 integration is to make it work with LDAP Directory server and Single sign-on configuration. This makes possible, for example, that the user can change his Windows Desktop password and the existing mail system keeps working as it is able to authenticate the user with the new password” said Jorge Salamero, and continued “The first beta version of Zentyal 3.0 including Samba 4 has been published already and I’m glad to share our experience on the integration.”

Additional note: Zentyal Team will be in Belgium and the Netherlands from the 30th of March until the 3rd of April. If you are interested in arranging a meeting, please contact us via info at zentyal.com

Zentyal Team is glad to announce that the first version of the zentyal-ltsp module is now available for testing! This new module provides Thin and Fat Client functionality and it is integrated with the DHCP module. Current features allow the users to:

• Build and update Thin and Fat client images
• Install local applications
• Limit one session per user
• Create profiles to apply different configuration to the clients
• Enable/Disable network compression, local apps, local devices, autologin, guest login and sound
• Select keyboard layout
• Enter any other custom LTSP options
• Configure Per-client Autologin and Guest Login

Zentyal Thin Clients module will help to deploy and manage a thin client installation, where user applications are transparently run on the server while they are being used on the workstations. The main advantages of this type of installations are that low-cost or outdated hardware can be used for the workstations, while latest applications are run on the server and workstation management is simplified as all clients run the same image from the server. This module is based on the LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project), the most popular open source implementation of the thin client technology.

To test this new module, install a fresh Zentyal 2.3 making sure that you have Internet connection so you get the latest packages. If you already have an installed Zentyal 2.3, upgrade to the latest version and select the new ‘Thin Clients’ module. There are few Additional notes you should also read.

Please remember that Zentyal 2.3 is a beta version and it is not intended for production environments. However, all testing help is greatly appreciated as well as bug reports, feedback and ideas that can be given through the Zentyal Forum or Zentyal Trac.

Zentyal Team is glad to announce the availability of the first Zentyal 2.3 installer, featuring Samba4. Zentyal 2.3 is a development version based on Ubuntu Server 12.04 beta and it will become Zentyal 3.0 (next stable release) in September 2012.

The new installer for 32- and 64-bit architectures can be downloaded from the Beta Downloads page. If you already have an existing Ubuntu Server 12.04 installation, you can also install the 2.3 packages simply by following the instructions of the Installation Guide.

The most relevante change since the release of the first Zentyal 2.3 packages, is the Samba4 integration. This is the first alpha version and some features are still missing, but when completed, Samba4 module will offer a full replacement for Microsoft Active Directory for users and resource management.

Please remember that Zentyal 2.3 is a beta version and it is not intended for production environments. However, all testing help is greatly appreciated as well as bug reports, feedback and ideas that can be given through the Zentyal Forum or Zentyal Trac.

Are you interested in contributing to the Zentyal project? Join the Bug Hunters Squad! This newly created team aims at guaranteeing better and faster debugging process by filtering and classifying bugs, ensuring that bug reports are accurate and finding duplicate bug reports, among other tasks.

It is important to note that joining in the Bug Hunters Squad doesn’t mean that you will have to extensively test Zentyal and find new bugs. Team members’ help is much appreciated in recognizing bugs in Forum posts, asking the users to file bug reports, completing inaccurate bug reports or making the necessary additional questions to reproduce and fix the reported bug, for instance.

Want to join the Bug Hunters Squad already? Great! Simply let us know that you want to join the team in this thread for clearance, check out the Bug Hunting Guidelines and get started! The Bug Hunters Squad is currently lead by Ichat, Zentyal Community Member, who will answer to any questions or doubts you might have regarding the bug hunting through the #zentyal on irc.freenode.net.

Zentyal Team is glad to announce that the first Zentyal 3.0 alpha packages are now available for testing. As Zentyal 3.0 will offer a new base system (Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS), Zentyal Community members’ help in testing is now specially needed to guarantee smooth upgrade.

To join the testing effort, Ubuntu Server 12.04 installation is necessary. If you already have one, simply check out the instructions on how to test the packages. And if not, download and install the latest Ubuntu Server 12.04 first. Zentyal installer will be available later on.

Remember to spread the word! And as always, feedback, issues and suggestions through the Trac and Forum are much appreciated.

Due to the growing interest in Zentyal development shown by many Zentyal users, an updated version of the Zentyal module development tutorial has now been published in the community wiki. The tutorial offers an easy-to-follow, practical guide for developing new Zentyal modules and extending the existing features.

For those interested in Zentyal development, it is good to know that making new Zentyal modules is now easier than ever – Among other reasons, this is because autotools is not used anymore for building the packages and instead, the developers can use Zentyal’s own zbuildtools package. Moreover, other helpful development tools have also been documented.

As to other development related news, it is also important to note that Zentyal project has moved from Subversion to GIT. To get Zentyal source, please check these new instructions. If you have any feedback or questions, please let us know through Zentyal Forum or Development Mailing List.

Zentyal Team is glad to announce that Zentyal 2.2 Virtual Machine images are now available for download! These VM images – that are available for VirtualBox, VMware and KVM (qcow2 format) – offer a quick and easy way to test Zentyal without actually having to install it. This is especially useful for those users who simply want to have a quick look to the latest Zentyal functionality.

The VM images together with instructions and additional information are available in the trac. It is important to note that the images come with a reduced set of Zentyal modules. In reality Zentyal offers many more features that can be easily enabled in the “Software Management” section once the Virtual Machine is up and running.

Remember to spread the word! And as always, feedback and suggestions through the Forum are much appreciated!

Zentyal Development Teams is glad to announce that the tentative Zentyal 3.0 roadmap has now been published. The roadmap has been based both on community proposals and ideas, external technical requirements (new Ubuntu Server LTS version) and specific needs the Development Team sees necessary to address to keep improving the project.

As already mentioned during the Zentyal Summit, the proposed main development lines for Zentyal 3.0 are the upgrade to Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS, better integration with Ubuntu in general, improvements on the Desktop side and better user experience.

For details, please check the trac. As this is not the definitive roadmap, you can give your feedback and participate in the conversation about it through the Forum.