Z3.2, well, that was a disaster. A huge number of patches and it still couldn't serve files.
Where were the members of the Zentyal hierarchy? Nowhere to be seen on this forum with the exception of what would appear to be the usual
expert suspects with their excuses and fawning admiration of the latest release, which, in the case of z3.2, is a complete brat.
Seen on this forum were comments to the fore that it was great at this, not so great as that, really bloody awful at some but overall, if you read the Zentyal hype on the main website, a real alternative to a certain other server package, as in "
Easy IT for Small Business A native Microsoft-compatible, all-in-one IT backoffice".
It's not. Simple as that.
It's broken, faulted, incomplete.
A server application which cannot serve files is no server at all. It has even been admitted by a Zentyal fanboy that he/she (mmm, maybe fangirl, then?) uses yet another box, another solution, to serve files. No 'all-in-one' bit there then.
After three months of struggling with the blood sucking z3.2, personally, I have, on one system, regressed to core 3.0.26, for the time being with absolutely no upgrades. File sharing is no problem, no hassle. It just works. At least, for me. My other system has now been changed to something else. That took a couple of hours but works as expected and required.
I have left a small system grinding away on z3.2, just for the hell of it. Definitely an S&M server. I thought, yup, give it a go so I followed the invitation to
upgrade to z3.3. Much like others, apparently, it screwed. It even told me that a package wasn't fully configured, one that I had never installed, suricata if you want, and spewed out loads of dpkg errors.
Zentyal, no, nope, not going there again. For the best part of forty years in IT or what used to be termed as data processing, networks and the like, this z3.2 and its feral z3.3 offspring is a dog. Heard too many promises of super upgrades and promised bug fixes heading towards the unattainable nirvanah.
According to Zentyal, the Community version and the Corporate version are the same or if you watch the recent presentation, they're not or rather, won't be. Not exactly a great starting point to demonstrate the abilities of an unknown package to prospective paying customers as is
exactly what I was doing. If you haven't seen the video and have absolutely nothing worthwhile to do as in
absolutely nothing, try this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDQqkqkOJKoIt's dreadful.
I don't know how many paying customers Zentyal has but judging by the comparitively low activity on this community forum, those commercial clients must have no problems. At all.