14 DAY TRIAL // Zentyal 3.4, a small Linux business server that can be configured as a Gateway, Unified Threat Manager (UTM), Infrastructure Manager, Office Server, Unified Communications Server, or a combination of them, is now available for download.
The Zentyal developers have been making great progress from one version to another of this business server and they managed to get a lot of new features and changes in the new release. They even managed to update the operating system used as base.
“Zentyal development team is proud to announce the release of Zentyal 3.4, a new Zentyal Server Community Edition. Zentyal Server is the open source alternative to Windows Small Business Server, including native replacements to Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange Server,” reads the official announcement.
Zentyal 3.4 actually features so many changes and improvements that it's hard to count them all. Among the most interesting ones there is better availability for Unified Threat Management (UTM) and Gateway, Outlook Anywhere support (a feature that will make a lot of users very happy), a new restyled Zentyal webmail UI that will greatly improve usability, and Out of Office support for OpenChange.
Another major change that is very important for this particular version is the fact the developers are now basing the new version of Zentyal 3.4 on Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander). This is a weird choice, to say the least, as Ubuntu 13.10 only has a few more months of support.
To be fair, they couldn't have used another version because there was none available. The new Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) is still a month away and it's not stable enough. It's very likely that Zentyal developers will probably choose the new Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) as a base for the next version of the business server.
“The migration from Zentyal 3.3 to 3.4, not only affects Zentyal but also involves a Ubuntu base distribution upgrade (from Ubuntu 12.04 to 13.10). Given the complexity of the scenario and also to ensure no regression is experienced by users, we have therefore decided to postpone this migration process for a few weeks in order to consolidate the scenario,” is also said in the announcement,
Other major changes include the removal of Apache instance for Zentyal Administration, a better way of providing bug reports, and a better system to handle the management of exceptions.
A complete list of changes and updates can be found in the official announcement. Download Zentyal 3.4 right now from Softpedia.