The development team of Zentyal, the Linux small business server previously know as eBox Platform, is glad to announce the availability of the second release candidate of Zentyal 2.0! The Zentyal 2.0-rc2 that is now available for download, is the last release candidate before the final 2.0 version that will be published on the 1st of September.

Please note that there is an important change in the way you log into Zentyal on this new version: the installer doesn’t ask you anymore for a password for the administration interface, but now you can log in with the username and password asked before (the same you use to get root console).

Besides bugfixing, specially in LDAP and Traffic Shaping, this release candidate comes with the first beta version of the new official Groupware module based on Zarafa. Give it a try and give us feedback!

As we are approaching the release date (September 1st), your help in testing this release candidate and giving feedback is more important than ever. So, it’s testing time! Any feedback and bug reports are really welcome!

You can download the new installer, as usual, from our Downloads page. If you already have installed a Zentyal 2.0-rc1 or eBox 1.5 you can also upgrade your packages to the latest versions available.

The development team of Zentyal, the Linux small business server previously know as eBox Platform, is glad to announce the availability of the first release with the new name! The Zentyal 2.0-rc1 that is now available for download, is the first release candidate before the final 2.0 version.

Naturally the main visible change since the last eBox 1.5-1 installer is the rebranding associated with the new name, but there are also two other important changes. Firstly, there has been a switch from blackbox to lxde to provide a more friendly desktop environment for non-expert users. Secondly, as already announced, eGroupware is no longer maintained so it has not been included in this installer. If you wish, it is still possible to install eGroupware from the official repositories, but you should take into account that it will be replaced soon. As to other changes and improvements, this version of course also ships all the bugfixing that has been done since the last release.

As the release date approaches (September 1st), your help in testing this release candidate and giving feedback is more important than ever. So, it’s testing time! We’re waiting for your feedback at the Forum!

During August we have published a series of posts (in the Planet eBox, Forum, Facebook and Twitter) to let you know that eBox Platform will change name and we’re glad to announce that the new name was made public today! eBox Platform will change its name to Zentyal and this change will become effective from the 1st of September, with the launch of the new 2.0 version of the server software. Simultaneously, the company eBox Technologies will also change it’s name to Zentyal.

As Ignacio Correas, CEO of eBox Technologies put it “The eBox Platform project has developed, grown and naturally, transformed from its initial goals during the last seven years of development. With this change, we want to ensure the product more accurately reflects what it does. “The current name eBox Platform suggests that the software comes integrated in a server hardware because of the word “Box”. However, the eBox Platform is purely server software that comes with cloud-based subscription services.”

The word Zentyal was chosen as the new name of eBox Platform because it closely resembles the main goal of the project: to make something as essential as network management easy and secure. Zentyal is fusion of two words, where “Zen” represents qualities such as intuition, insight and balance – the easiness of carrying out tasks via intuition – and “Essential” represents qualities such as basic, fundamental and necessary.

Zentyal logo

If you are interested in knowing more about why we’ve decided to make the change, how was the process of choosing the new name, how come we selected Zentyal or how we came up with the Zentyal logo, just check these posts in Planet eBox.

As already announced few weeks ago, the 2.0 version of eBox Platform will be out on the 1st of September with a new name. While the eBox Platform development team is dedicating itself to making the latest bugfixes and improvements to the software with community members’ and eBox users’ help, we would warmly welcome any help in translating eBox Platform. The translations can be submitted via intuitive, easy-to-use, graphical web application at http://translate.ebox-platform.com/ that allows anyone to contribute to the translation simply by registering on-line and starting to translate!

Please note that the deadline for submitting translations for the 2.0 version is the 26th of August. Currently eBox Platform has been started to translate to 32 different languages. You can check if your language is already available for translating and if not, ask for creating a new language group at the ebox-i18n mailing list. The 10 most translated languages at the moment are:

Hungarian: 100%
Spanish: 97%
Portuguese: 92%
Portuguese (Brazil): 91%
Swedish: 89%
Norwegian Bokmal: 88%
Estonian: 86%
French: 86%
Russian: 85%
German: 71%

In order to allow the different localization (language) groups to self-organize themselves and to guarantee better quality of translation, the eBox Platform Team has thought about establishing self-governed localization groups. Whereas it is not obligatory to belong to a localization group in order to translate, we do encourage you to get to know the other eBox Platform translators of your language and to work together for a better translation! For additional information, please read the details in the wiki and send an e-mail to the ebox-i18n mailing list. Let’s make those percentages go up!

The development team of eBox Platform, the Linux small business server, is glad to announce that you can now download a new installer CD for the eBox Platform 1.5 series. Please note that eBox Platform 1.5-1 is a development version based on Ubuntu 10.04 and it will become eBox Platform 2.0 (next stable release) after a stabilization period.

As to the improvements, the most relevant changes on this new 1.5-1 installer are focused on improving the performance:

We believe that this is an important change and we would be glad to have your feedback to check that everything is right. There shouldn’t be any problems on a fresh install, but if you upgrade from an older version with the configuration stored in gconf there may be issues in the migration process.

In addition, the 1.5-1 installer includes new versions of the following modules: Users, DHCP, Backup, Groupware, Firewall, IDS, Monitor, NTP, Software Management, HTTP Proxy and Webserver. These can be also updated via the Software Management module if you already have a installed 1.5 system.

Please remember that the 1.5 versions are beta and not intended for production environments. However, your feedback is very important to make eBox Platform 2.0 a great release! Please do not hesitate to report any issues through the eBox Support Forum or eBox Trac.

eBox Platform Development Team announced today that the eBox Platform 2.0 release will be delayed until September 1st. The decision was taken last Friday evening, after studying the different options and concluding that in order to release more stable version of the product, more time was needed for testing and improvements.

The first installer CD of eBox Platform 1.5 (beta version of eBox Platform 2.0) was released for testing and feedback on the 26th of July. As mentioned in the announcement, the development of eBox Platform 2.0 has now finished and the development team is now fully centered on testing and bugfixing the software. Moreover, during this stabilization period we are also dedicating time for optimizing the software to improve the performance and reduce the installation time. The aim of dedicating all August for these purposes is to guarantee that the next major release of eBox Platform will be the most stable release ever.

The whole eBox Platform team apologizes for having failed to announce properly this change until today and for not fulfilling the expectations of many eBox users and community members. As passionate for what we do, we sometimes rush forward and forget to explain ourselves. As people, we make mistakes. However, our intentions are the best: make a great, stable release.

We hope you’ll stick with us the whole August: there will be improved beta versions and we’d be glad to count on your feedback!

eBox Platform development team is glad to announce that the first installer CD for eBox Platform 1.5 is now available for download. Please note that eBox Platform 1.5 is a development version based on Ubuntu 10.04 and it will become eBox Platform 2.0 (next stable release of the Linux small business server) after a stabilization period. The development of eBox Platform 2.0 is now finished and from now on all the attention will be focused on testing, bugfixing and optimizing the software. These are the most relevant changes since eBox Platform 1.4 release:

Please remember that 1.5 is a beta version and it is not intended for production environments. However, your feedback is very important to make eBox Platform 2.0 a great release – Please do not hesitate to report any issues through the eBox Support Forum or eBox Trac.

We’re glad to let you know that HowtoForge has published the article “Using eBox As A Gateway: Firewall, Traffic Shaping, HTTP Proxy And More”. This tutorial shows you step by step how to use eBox as a Gateway, featuring network configuration, load balancing between two Internet connections with WAN failover and multigateway rules for policy routing, traffic shaping, DHCP and DNS cache for the LAN network and HTTP proxy with different content filtering policies and antivirus.

The described scenario could be a typical Gateway deployment in a production environment like in a high school or a company with a maximum of 250 users with strict content filtering requirements and multiple Internet connections. The tutorial will guide you step by step how to configure two Internet routers with a network card for each one.

In the latest issue of the leading UK Linux magazine Linux Format, its Roundup section – that benchmarks every month a large number of software solutions, was focused on comparing a selection of Firewall Distributions and finding the best option for both home and office setups. Among the compared distributions were ClearOS, IPCop, Monowall, PFSense, Smoothwall Advanced, Smoothwall Express and the final winner, eBox Platform.

The starting point of the comparative was that many people are looking for an efficient and easy-to-use Firewall that they could use both for their home and office setups and the different alternatives were evaluated taking into account how easy their installation and configuration was. To help their readers to make the right decision through the massive choice of firewall distributions available, the Roundup looked at what made some options better than others and what would be the best option for the readers’ particular setups.

After concluding that all the Firewall Distributions selected for the comparative could perfectly match the needs and expectations of someone looking for “just a firewall”, Martin Meredith, the author of the article, went a bit further and looked at the “bonuses” offered by each candidate. After the full review, eBox Platform was declared winner thanks to “the astounding feature list and the fact that it’s built on top of a standard Ubuntu install means that along with the firewall, you’ve got a box that can do close to anything you can imagine.” Furthermore, the author also enhanced “the potential of eBox to have any kind of functionality added to it” and “the super-powered features” it offers.

In the detailed review, Linux Format justifies the extramarks granted to eBox Platform by this sentence “eBox offers so much by way of configuration, and provides almost everything you’d need to run your home or office network right from the default install.” The detailed eBox Platform review concludes with the 9/10 rating and advice to the readers not to be put off by the huge number of features available through the interface.

The eBox Platform development team is glad to let you know that the eBox Platform 1.4-2 installer is now released! The new installer, available for download at http://trac.ebox-platform.com/wiki/Download, comes with plenty of bugfixes and some minor improvements. The most relevant changes include:

The full changelog is available at http://trac.ebox-platform.com/wiki/Document/Changelog/1.4-2 As always, we would appreciate any feedback – Please do not hesitate to report any issues through the eBox Support Forum or eBox Trac.