back to article A Linux server OS that's fiddly but tweakable

ClearOS is the new name for Point Clark Network's ClarkConnect, which was a commercial server distro, released in 2000, with a limited free version. Now, though, Point Clark has restructured and the distro is managed by ClearConnect, which has made it free and open source. The result is that what was the top-of-the-range …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    If the author says

    that some functions are locked out until you create an account on ClearCenter's website and then use the dashboard to register your new server under that account, I wonder how can it be called a free and open source software ? If we look at CentOS for example, you have access to all functions irrespective of the fact that you register it or not. To me it looks more like what the world calls an Open Core product. Come on, people, go with Webmin and stop fooling around with this nonsense. In order to be able to use any *nix properly, all you need is to know how to read and write in plain English and have a minimum desire to learn. How hard can this be for a Windows sysadmin ?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Alert

      "I wonder how can it be called a free and open source software"

      At least one of the "requires account" features is a free online backup of your config... which isn't possible without a registration of some sort to allow recovery. That's the same as Jolicloud's Netbook OS distro, which I'm pretty sure is offered by some other distros too.

      On the spectrum, ClearOS probably has more in common with RedHat than CentOS. The more pertinent question is that of the "ClearSDN" services: content filters, anti-SPAM, IDS, OS/App, A/V, and various other updates/services. This is a *big* difference with some of the other distros being discussed, and while the prices are *very reasonable* the implication here is that your ClearOS will not stay as up-to-date without these services as the other all-free distros. Maybe I don't know my lingo well enough, but I don't think any of this disqualifies ClearOS as F/OSS,

      That said... there is a killer feature in the ClearOS gateway layer that nobody has discussed. ClearOS can do MultiWAN (so load balancing/failover between two WAN/Internet links). That is a very hard-to-find feature without stepping into Enterprise level network hardware - for a SOHO it's either ClearOS or some of the Cisco (rebranded Linksys) "Dual WAN" devices that, from what I've seen with them, don't seem to last too long (especially with their 4-Port don't be surprised if you have to replace it after a year). I'm a big fan of ClearOS as a Gateway for SOHO.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ubunut doesnt dominate anything

    Look at distrowatch, Fedora is #1 now. Spaceboy can take his Unity and his Mono, and launch them to outer space.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      ORLY?

      Over the last 30 days, yes, but over the last week, it's Mint (based on Ubuntu), and over the last 3 or 6 months, it's Ubuntu. And further, all that chart measures is how many people have visited the distribution's page on Distrowatch. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

      1. frymaster

        indeed

        "And further, all that chart measures is how many people have visited the distribution's page on Distrowatch"

        and put it this way, I already know what ubuntu is, so I'm never likely to visit its distrowatch page

    2. Number6

      Bucking the Trend

      If that's the case then I'm bucking the trend again. A couple of my Fedora machines are now running Linux Mint, mainly because I got fed up with the need to upgrade every year. One day I'll get around to moving the server machine over as well, which will have to be soon as it's running Fedora 12 and has to be moved to something new anyway.

  3. foxyshadis

    No baked-in RAID?

    Even for a SOHO, that pretty much disqualifies it from the use as anything but the absolute lowest of servers. It has a lot of interesting corporate features, it looks like, but lack of automatic RAID install is a bit of a blow to its professional creds - unless you use VMs exclusively.

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