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Lycoris Acquires A Server Project
Avidwriter writes "Lycoris has developed into a decent desktop Linux distro but hasn't really had anything to offer on the server end. Now it's taking over the old e-smith server project, one of those that always got plenty of love but never seemed to really find a home as it bounced from one corporate sponsor to another. Will this work out? An analyst quoted in the NewsForge story about the buy has doubts, but says it might be okay."
A user-friendly server OS? It must be a first!
;-)
Oh wait. I forgot about OS X Server.
(fp?)
This is completely out of leftfield.
The SME Server required a driving force to keep it in focus, but I personally think too many excellent cooks were beginning to spoil the broth.
Most good projects have someone committed to the product, much to their peers / spouses disgust.
Even though people had their problems with him, Richard Morrell with SmoothWall was a prime example of this.
The e-smith 3.x-5.x team were the driving force of the product you see today. They deserve a lot more credit than shown in this product announcement.
This is possibly the best thing that could have happened for SME Server.
PS Where was the community consultation? This was supposed to be the Great Community-Based effort.
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
I've been using SME first as a Firewall / Web / File / Mail / FTP Server, then later on a DMZ behind a dedicated Firewall (Astaro), as I wasn't comfortable runing my servers in direct contact with the net (LDAP, for instance, has nothing to do on a front-line firewall...)
the SME server is basically a Red-hat 7.2 with a very simple Web_Interface...
My system has been running fine for the last 3+ years.
They recently added an auto-update feature (yum) as well as some nice scripts to auto-install a full Linux virus checker (bitdefender and AVG I think) for the mail/file server+SpamAssasin...
If no script, you usually find a very proper how-to where all you really have to know is how to copy and paste to the console... CMS, LDAP, Customer Web_site delegated management, Ecommerce, network jukebox have been adapted to SME.
It being based on red-hat also allow you to install anything Linux that has ever been compiled for rh7.2, and you can install gcc and all necessary packages to compile as you wish...only you won't have web controls, except if you write the interface into the RPM specifically for SME...
So it's a perfect server for anyone with a shallow knowledge of Linux configuration or the wish to implement a complete server within one hour...
You can do most of the configuration with the web interface and it's all really trivial and fast when you already have some networking knowledge.
Right now I'm hosting a French Rock group fan page (not so big, maybe 100 000 hits a month), along with a starting genealogy site - gift to my father, have to keep him occupied 8) - and a webmail system that also is my pop/smtp server...
runs on PII450 + 320 Mo Ram and a 10 Gig hdd, average CPU usage is 4% and I have never had a single problem with it...
The only reproach I had was that it can barely be seen as a bleeding edge (kernel 2.2, etc), but then it just works...
Recently there has been a project going on porting SME to Centos (RH Enterprise full GPL edition)
you can find the details here.
SME had a specific web Interface system, and the red hat RPMs where modified to add web-interface and specifics...
Maybe Lycoris can work out some adaptation to the Webmin portofolio and add/modify to everything that already exists there, facilitating roll-over (for example SME samba configuration is much simpler that Webmin's) in a pure web-controlled Debian distro...
If Lycoris keeps the broad simplicity concept and integrates it with their debian update/install system, you have the perfect all in one linux server with recent Apache/PHP/ Whatever you need, you maybe have what we all need, a simple, user friendly andf possibly ultra-powerfull all purpose "Linux Server for The Masses"(TM)
SME is the distribution that made me start Linux as I was looking for a dead cheap firewall and decided to use that old P200 I had in a closet...
I used SCO and Smoothwall before using SME for the added web/mail/ftp server possibilities.
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
This is pretty interesting news. I used e-smith for about 3 years before replacing it a year or so ago after Mitel announced they would stop developing / supporting the community version of e-smith.
/etc/php.ini, was frustrating unless you knew the ins and outs of how e-smith wanted you to update it, then run the script to update from the templates to your actual config files. I also didn't care for their iptables configuration, but at the time there were some great community resources to help with that, though I find smoothwall a better solution for me personally these days.
This was an awesome product for it's time. As a hobbyist being introduced to linux, it made everything very easy, especially the samba and email server (and built-in webmail). Today on a FC2 version using Webmin, I still struggle learning the in's and out's of running an email server that e-smith made so easy.
One of the downsides to me, was e-smith's use of templates to update configuration files. I understood why they did it that way (so you wouldn't screw up your config files), but finding and updating their template files, for example php instead of using
It will be interesting to see Lycoris work on development. One of the main reasons I switched to FC2 was using apt-get to update the server, especially security fixes as it wasn't always the most timely of updates. If they can keep on top of that, and use the community resources available, they could have a measure of success, in both introductin linux as a server distro for home users and small businesses.
I've recently become responsible for administering an SME/e-smith mailserver and, to be honest, I find that customising the server, beyond any of the parameters provided by the web interface, is painful. I can't even add an entry to the /etc/hosts
without jumping through the convoluted hoops of expanding custom templates, and such. I do realize that this is meant to streamline the configuration for the non-technical admins; but, for the time being, I find that adding any functionality to the server, such as snmp capability, or installing SpamAssassin, to be a nuisance, at best.