Koozali.org: home of the SME Server

SME or Kuadra?!

fargo

SME or Kuadra?!
« on: November 26, 2005, 01:13:22 AM »
After Moses of kirux.net has released his community edition, I'm really confused over which way to go, SME or Kuadra!

Kuadra is built over SME 6.0.1 and has many additional contribs already built-in, such as Internet filtering, anti-spam/virus, CRM, and fax.

Any suggestion please?

Offline MSmith

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SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #1 on: November 26, 2005, 02:08:41 AM »
Personally I intend to move along with the 7.0 development line, but I've downloaded Kuadra and intend to set up a test server and play with it.  Why not, after all?
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fargo

SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #2 on: November 26, 2005, 02:14:24 AM »
Quote from: "MSmith"
Personally I intend to move along with the 7.0 development line, but I've downloaded Kuadra and intend to set up a test server and play with it.  Why not, after all?
Yes, sure why not! We need just to hear from those who tried it and see what they think. Stability, support, and seamless integration between OS parts are the most important things.

persisto

Why not?
« Reply #3 on: November 26, 2005, 01:36:59 PM »
Indeed, why not:

1)The Kuadra ES Community Edition offers the same functionality of the Kuadra ES supported version, but with one domain and 6 users.

2)Not sure it would be wise to confide data to "Kuadra SQL Server" (Mentioned in the doc in relation to SQL Ledger, which according to its own info is only compatible with DB2, Oracle and PostgreSQL)

3)Download Kuadra ES Community Edition via BitTorrent :hammer: (Soon) :hammer: (emphasis are mine)

kiruxadmin

Re: Why not?
« Reply #4 on: November 26, 2005, 07:01:57 PM »
Quote from: "persisto"
Indeed, why not:

Not sure it would be wise to confide data to "Kuadra SQL Server" (Mentioned in the doc in relation to SQL Ledger, which according to its own info is only compatible with DB2, Oracle and PostgreSQL)

Download Kuadra ES Community Edition via BitTorrent :hammer: (Soon) :hammer: (emphasis are mine)


The Kuadra ES includes MySql and PostgreSQL (8.1) by default, and offers full compatibility.  Also, the new version 11.1 which includes free shared calendars from email client (thunderbird) is already uploaded to the mirrors are in the process of putting the bittorrented image un place. It should be ready to download by November 20 or December 2 at the latest.

If any questions you can send kirux and email or post  in the Kirux Community Forum.

Offline MSmith

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SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #5 on: November 27, 2005, 04:47:48 AM »
That six-user limitation is a deal-breaker right there.  There's one CD that'll be a coaster.
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fargo

SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #6 on: November 27, 2005, 06:29:48 AM »
kiruxadmin:

Is Kirux a one-man project? It is not clear how you provide support to your potential customers. Your site does not even have a support page, only contact us form!

kiruxadmin

Six User Limitation
« Reply #7 on: November 28, 2005, 05:18:05 AM »
Quote from: "MSmith"
That six-user limitation is a deal-breaker right there.  There's one CD that'll be a coaster.


Statistics have shown that most small businesses have an operational staff of 6 or fewer people. Larger organizations usually opt for a fully supported version.

It is important to note that this is a community edition. If it is your prerogative to burn a perfectly good cd and use it as a coaster so be it.

kiruxadmin

kiruxadmin

SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #8 on: November 28, 2005, 05:21:45 AM »
Quote from: "fargo"
kiruxadmin:

Is Kirux a one-man project? It is not clear how you provide support to your potential customers. Your site does not even have a support page, only contact us form!


Kirux Technology Solutions is not a one-man project, if so he would be one tired man  ;-) . We have not had a need for a support page as our customers have no issues with contacting us directly via e-mail or via phone. Our support is direct, efficient and timely. We do have a forum which many visit for information and some support for the community edition. You are all invited to participate.

kiruxadmin

fargo

SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #9 on: November 29, 2005, 06:21:04 PM »
Quote from: "kiruxadmin"
Kirux Technology Solutions is not a one-man project, if so he would be one tired man  ;-) .

Oh, really! Then how come these users were found in the 'users' directory after clean install:

moses  moses01  moses02  moses03

All members of your group are named Moses then ;-)

Quote from: "kiruxadmin"
We have not had a need for a support page

Hmmm, you have not had a need for a support page! So, your kuadra is 100% stable and bug-free :pint:

Quote from: "kiruxadmin"
We do have a forum which many visit for information and some support for the community edition. You are all invited to participate.

Yes, a forum with about 4 topics and censorship  :hammer:

Offline MSmith

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Re: Six User Limitation
« Reply #10 on: November 29, 2005, 10:26:42 PM »
Quote from: "kiruxadmin"
Statistics have shown that most small businesses have an operational staff of 6 or fewer people. Larger organizations usually opt for a fully supported version.

It is important to note that this is a community edition. If it is your prerogative to burn a perfectly good cd and use it as a coaster so be it.


Heck, I know *families* now that have more than six computers in their homes!  I'd be interested in the source of this statistic, as I am in the computer support business and most of my corporate clients have 8-15 computers -- and by "most" I mean approximately 75%.  

The beauty of the SME Server is that it really doesn't *need* support ... it Just Works.  (Assuming you don't deviate TOO far from the stock configuration. Are Kuadra's modifications unstable enough to need lots of support?? :-o)

What is a "community edition", exactly?  The only thing Mitel left out of THEIR "community edition" was the VPN capability, which is logical since they actually commit corporate resources to establishing and supporting the VPN connections made through ServiceLink (or whatever they call it).
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Offline Franco

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Re: SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #11 on: November 30, 2005, 06:31:53 PM »
Quote from: "fargo"
After Moses of kirux.net has released his community edition, I'm really confused over which way to go, SME or Kuadra!


SME 7 is modern, free, unlimited, secure, flexible and much more. Why should it even be compared to some modified SME 6 version?

kiruxadmin

Re: Six User Limitation
« Reply #12 on: December 02, 2005, 12:22:04 AM »
Quote from: "MSmith"

The beauty of the SME Server is that it really doesn't *need* support ... it Just Works.  (Assuming you don't deviate TOO far from the stock configuration. Are Kuadra's modifications unstable enough to need lots of support?? :-o)

If what you say is true, then all the forums must be empty, also why your sponsor Ruffdogs is offering a supported version of the SME? and announced as the SME Server powered by Ruffdogs, it is a different version?
Check the link:
http://www.ruffdogs.com/modules.php?siteid=43&name=static&file=smeserver

Offline MSmith

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SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #13 on: December 02, 2005, 03:58:12 AM »
Okay, I'll bite ... if you have watched the forums over time, as I have, you will see that the bulk of the questions have to do with problems with customizations/contribs, requests for networking help, newbie questions on how to do simple Linux tasks, and hardware issues.  (I'm not even mentioning "will SME run on hardware X" and "when will version Y be released".)  But what you will *not* see are posts complaining that something in the stock install isn't working properly, because that really just doesn't happen.  Dud or unsupported hardware, sure, problems galore reported.  Complaints that SME doesn't do what they want, absolutely.  

(Personally, I won't be *happy* until SME balances my checkbook, does my grocery shopping, washes my dogs and takes out the trash, but as I recall the roadmap that's not until version 12.0 or thereabouts.)

But I don't see any significant numbers of people saying "I understand how it's supposed to work, my hardware is supported, I didn't mess around with it, and it STILL doesn't work."

And if people don't want to wade through the forums or can't be arsed to search ... into which latter category a lot of folks belong, clearly ... then paid support is the answer for them.  I'm happy that Ruffdogs is stepping up to provide that service, and hope that they make a few bucks doing so.
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wallyrp

SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #14 on: December 02, 2005, 06:08:49 AM »
Good Evening,

I have land in Afghanistan near Pakistan for sale. Also, I have stocks and bonds available for businesses in Iraq.

I thought this was a SME forum/community not the local bulletin board for the local garage sales. This thread looks too much like an advertising thread for me.

As a member of this here SME community, I would like to propose,  :-P that such advertising would result in the advertising poster, who persists in advertising his/her product, to have their posting rights revoked.  :hammer:

Offline MSmith

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SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #15 on: December 02, 2005, 02:09:55 PM »
Now don't be like that, Wally ... don't you find kiruxadmin's posts even slightly entertaining?

What I'm waiting for is the CentOS version of Kuadra.  Because SME 6/Kuadra = RH7.3 = good, but the PAST and SME 7 = CentOS = the FUTURE.

Just think ... all that programming work, pulling all those disparate elements together and integrating them into the templating system.  (I couldn't do it, so kudos to the SME dev team ... and, I suppose, to Moses as well.)  Personally, if I were Moses, I'd contemplate the very spiffy version 7 and just cry myself to sleep at night thinking about all the work ahead of me.

In short:  Kuadra = PWNED, SME = TEH WINNAR!
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jimmyneutron

SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #16 on: June 18, 2006, 05:16:30 AM »
Hey I just tried the kirux product after trying SME Server 7. I found the Kuadra system to be the exact same system with a lot of addons, but he only allows me to have 10 users. Since most of the database configuration is the same (even the wording e-smith on the commands), what would be the command to disable this limited number of accounts?

Offline Franco

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SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #17 on: June 18, 2006, 05:30:39 AM »
You could try deleting a file that counts the active users under the events folder, locate count-active-users
That may keep the database from growing   :-D

jimmyneutron

SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #18 on: June 18, 2006, 05:09:14 PM »
:-(
Not it

Offline Franco

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SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #19 on: June 23, 2006, 04:22:36 AM »
Humm, in that case one of the developers can help you, maybe Charlie and the guys can give you the answer.
That will certainly put this guy out of business  :-D

Why don't you use plain SME instead? Is there any advantage of using this copied version?

Offline mrjhb3

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SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #20 on: July 02, 2006, 12:10:37 PM »
I'm a little late to the game here, but I gave the kuadra 11.2 server a quick spin and here are my thoughts.  Kind of long sorry.
Quote from: "jimmyneutron"
Hey I just tried the kirux product after trying SME Server 7. I found the Kuadra system to be the exact same system with a lot of addons,

Yes, that is what I see as well.  A lot of the addons would make nice contribs in sme 7.  There are some differences, like cyrus imap instead of dovecot.  What's that really give me?  All I could see was the ability to enforce a  separate email quota on a per user basis.  I thought dovecot 1.0 was supposed to support this as well, but I could be wrong.  SME currently uses .99

Quote from: "jimmyneutron"
but he only allows me to have 10 users. Since most of the database configuration is the same (even the wording e-smith on the commands), what would be the command to disable this limited number of accounts?

Again, I see that as well.  This is nothing specific or exclusive to the Kaudra system, it is still just using an SME db setting.  Use this command to get around that limitation: config delprop sysconfig MaxUsers

Personal observations about the Kuadra server:

It doesn't matter how pretty you try to make the interface, or how many addons you bundle into this product, it's still based on stolen code from SME Server without the proper copyright information.  How can you not give credit to SME Server!  Without SME Server, you have no code to base your system off off.  

There has been quite a bit of work done to mask the templating system.  i.e. moving the templates to a different directory structure, but you still use the same basic calls.

The server operates in the server/gateway mode only.  To simulate the serveronly mode, you put the internal and external interfaces in the same subnet.  What's that about?  I got this info from the Kirux forums.  If I mis-understood this point, please correct me.

The server installs Horde 3.0.9, which contains a security vulnerability that is/was being highly exploited.  I don't see a way to apply updates to this system?  Did I miss something?

Where are the sources for this distro?  You can't see what rpms have been installed since the install is done from an image file.  At least rpm -qa doesn't give you any output.

What portions of this distro code are really Kirux proprietary?  Besides the remote i-bays, most everything installed is already open sourced.

Most of this post has been pretty negative, but there are some good things that the system has:  Most of the addons would be excellent contribs for sme 7.  IMO some could even go into the base if the Kirux folks decided to work with the dev team.

Sub-domain panel - Being able to easily create sub-domains and set what the default content would be.  I didn't do much here, but on the surface, this looks like a good feature.  This is probably not that hard to port to SME 7 as an add-on

LDAP GAL Contacts - Being able to have a global address book of contacts without having to create users is good.  This is probably not that hard to port to SME 7 as on add-on.

Additional proxy settings and reports - I think if we dig around enough in the forums, we can find that someone has made most of these functions available on SME 7.

Content Filtering - using squidguard - Again, I think most of this is available if we dig.

IM - I think this would be a good contrib for SME 7.  Didn't try this on KES.

Don't really like how KES is doing backup, though.

I think it would be and could be very beneficial to all to have the Kirux dev folks work with the SME dev folks to continue to refine and enhance the SME Server.  A lot of dev time has been spent by Kirux folks to get their clone system out the door, which could have benefited the development of SME 7 and the contribs.org community.  I just think it's fraud to sell a system that you claim as yours without any acknowledgement of where the actual code base is being derived from.

So, that's my two cents worth.  I do hope Moses sees this post so he can add some comments and clarifications.

Thanks,

John Bennett
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Offline sognenovski

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SME or Kuadra?!
« Reply #21 on: July 02, 2006, 04:03:00 PM »
It was months ago when I gave this distro clone a blast.

No software raid
Didnt load on Dell SC430 (sata hdd)
Unstable in server only mode

Backup method wasnt ideal.....yep, I to have learnt the hard way.

So I stop wasting my time and loaded 6 back up with the contribs.

With the little knowledge of SME/Linux, I did try this

/sbin/e-smith/db configuration setprop sysconfig MaxUsers 100

though, you have to save this? (not sure)

Steve