over 3 years
ago
Excellent product on its way! Keep in sight!
by
stenito
I started using eBox when it was version 0.7. Although there is no 1.0 release yet, eBox combines a well conceived product with a clear strategy toward providing a SME product anyone can install and use.
It's clear interface covers a professional product, built by a team that is very responsive when problems need to be solved.
I for one will continue using and promoting the use of eBox.
2 of 2 users found the following review helpful.
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over 2 years
ago
Powerful yet simple
by
solique
I've been using eBox for a few weeks now in production (my home server) and have been very pleased with it. The interface is clean and uncluttered, and configuration is extremely simple - setting up a Samba PDC or mail server with IMAP takes a matter of minutes. Out of the box it offers many services of use to both home and SME users including a filtering proxy, QoS, firewall, NTP server, POP, IMAP and SMTP support, DNS server and other. It is
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manageable by those both experience and inexperience in Linux and server system administration and has good end user documentation. You really have to try it to appreciate the platform.
What differentiates eBox for other similar products from a developers point of view is its framework. This framework allows for the quick intergration of other software into the eBox interface, including share user and groups, configuration file generation and save/rollback of settings. To give you some idea, I've just released a beta of a subversion module which took about 20 hours, including the time to learn about the eBox API. The resultant package (a .deb file - eBox is based on Debain Sarge, with Etch support coming soon), was 9K in size.
The developers are happy to help, even when the question may be simple. They're on the #ebox IRC channel regularly and there are user and developer mailing lists. Project management is handle via Trac.
As far as shortcomings, there are still a few rough edges in the pre 1.0 release. The main tool for managing network hosts is not well integrated with the rest of the platform, resulting in the need to enter duplicate data, although that is on the roadmap to fix. There is a somewhat unfinished feel to it at the moment, but that that is because it is still heavily in development. Having said that, the release have been very stable.
What differentiates eBox for other similar products from a developers point of view is its framework. This framework allows for the quick intergration of other software into the eBox interface, including share user and groups, configuration file generation and save/rollback of settings. To give you some idea, I've just released a beta of a subversion module which took about 20 hours, including the time to learn about the eBox API. The resultant package (a .deb file - eBox is based on Debain Sarge, with Etch support coming soon), was 9K in size.
The developer docs are not comprehensive at the moment, however the source is well commented. The API doc is not available yet, but is due soon. Some of the core module (LDAP in particular) could do with some streamlining but is doesn't make coding more onerous. It's a fun platform to develop for with progress, and its rewards, coming quickly.
As it stands at the moment, eBox still needs work but it is getting that work from the guys at Warp. As it stands at the moment it makes an excellent home server and with 1.0 due in a few months a good candidate for review for businesses.
The path to 1.0 is very exciting with many features on the roadmap that will really set this appart from similar software. I heartily recommend it, and look forward to given a 5/5 on the 1.0 release :)
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2 of 2 users found the following review helpful.
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