ClearOS – OS for Your Server, Network, and Gateway Systems | Hacker News Reader

ClearOS – OS for Your Server, Network, and Gateway Systems

clearos.com

44 pointssonograph41 comments

> What is ClearOS?

> ClearOS is an open source software platform that leverages the open source model to deliver a simplified, low cost hybrid IT experience for SMBs. The value of ClearOS is the integration of free open source technologies making it easier to use. By not charging for open source, ClearOS focuses on the value SMBs gain from the integration so SMBs only pay for the products and services they need and value.

cool. so is this a hypervisor or... what is this again?

EDIT: oh:

Can I create Windows VMs?

Yes, however, you would be responsible for complying with and paying all associated licensing terms and costs.

Thank you. I got about 50% down the website marketing fluff and noped out. HP needs better copy.

Doesn't clarify this much to me. Thankfully the wikipedia article does: "ClearOS (also known as the ClearOS System, formerly ClarkConnect[3]) is an operating system marketed by the software company ClearCenter. It is based on CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux"

They try really hard to hide the fact that it's yet another Linux distro

ClearOS is the rebranded "ClarkConnect" distro I believe. I'm not sure when the rebranding happened(10+ years ago?) anymore, but I was surprised to find out the project is still alive at all. I've only encountered 1 human who used the software in my life, and that encounter was 15+ years ago.

For history, it used to be an all-in-one network services distro. It handled your core network services like DHCP and VPNs - but also handled service-oriented daemons like FTP/SMTP.

Interesting! A few weeks ago a sales guy at my job mentioned ClarkConnect. I became curious since that was the first time I’ve heard someone mentioning that product.

Apparently it seems like the foundation that manages ClearOS also created some kinda cryptocoin?!

https://news.clear.co.com/all-clearos-users-now-can-get-free...

Does that seem like a red flag to anyone else or just me?

Me too. Can’t see anything good come out of that.

ClarkConnect, oh wow, there's a name I haven't heard in ages.

I'm flashing back to all of the various small-office firewall appliance distributions from that era. ClarkConnect, Smoothwall, m0n0wall... there were others that I'm blanking on.

I used ClarkConnect for a tiny little shop I worked for in 2007 for setting up an SMB share to use for shared Excel/Access functionality. I was just learning Linux and not that familiar with distros or how to setup file servers manually, so it made it quite easy.

You are correct. Check out Directpointe for insight into the ClearOS’s founders earlier ventures. They used ClarkConnect on a few of their customers tech stacks as well.

not to be confused with Intel's Clear Linux :-)

https://clearlinux.org/

except when it is..

I was also trying to see if it was related to Clear Linux OS as the name is clearly too similar and they are both targeting high performance on servers.

Sounds a lot like Cockpit, which provides a graphical interface for administering Linux servers.

https://cockpit-project.org/

Have you tried that? I see some servers nagging me about that, but never tried.

I have and I like it. It was in the apt repositories for Ubuntu so I use that to manage my hypervisor (which is just an Ubuntu LTS box). In browser VNC to manage/install VMs is pretty great for when SSH isn't set up yet or I'm having issues with it.

It has a libvirt extension you can use to manage the VMs which is nice. Kind of remind me of webmin tbh.

That's great, I'll give it a try then. Thanks.

I never heard of it, but it’s apparently good enough to be baked into RHEL

> The Red Hat Customer Portal product documentation pages document how to use the “web console” (another name for Cockpit). While this is specifically for the version of Cockpit that ships in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the interface and its usage is similar on other distributions where the Cockpit web console exists

Basically, it is CentOS but pitched at small businesses as a "validated" option when paired with HPE servers.

to be fair, for small bussiness it works quite well.

Think, windows small bussiness server but linux based.

I'm not sure what to make of the company. It is a strange mix of small/mid-range servers and consumer electronics: wireless earbuds, smart watch, bluetooth speaker, car mount charger... [0]

Also strange that they "sell" phones purely on a subscription basis, though they aparantly have a ClearOS distro in the works that could be put on other phones, which could be interesting.

Otherwise I don't really see the advantage of them over a more established option that also has baked-in support like pure RedHat w/ (probably) wider support to put it on your own server, which has a longer track record of support as well.

The only really interesting/innovative thing I see is in ClearOS for mobile. I might be willing to pay for a more open OS that (per their description) also supports android apps. (I'm assuming they forked Android? Not sure)

[0] https://www.clear.store/

Is anybody else completely turned off by the stupid stock images that HP uses on this site?

I really hate that people call Linux distributions 'X OS' and you get sites like this which at no point clarify where it is actually a distro or an entirely new OS.

It is confusing and somewhat disrespectful towards Linux.

Linux is just an implementation detail; it's a more accurate description to call it a GNU/Linux system, yes, but most Linux distros could drop in one of the BSDs or illumos as their base layer and from a user perspective nothing would change.

That depends how much the applications depend on specific syscalls, file locations or DBUS based IPC.

It is just the assertion that UNIX wars got replaced with Linux distribution wars.

There are quite a few all-in-one Linux distros like this geared for small businesses/enterprises to basically be a “gateway that does everything” type of product (they were all the rage like ~8-12 years ago from what I remember?). A couple others that are popular are Zentyal and Univention Corporate Server, which I believe is _quite_ popular and used quite a bit in Germany and Europe.

From https://www.clearos.com/products/clearos-editions/clearos-mo... ( Coming )

ClearOS Mobile will eventually run on many cell phone hardware manufacturers including but not limited to the following

In other words : ClearOS Mobile is not available if it exists at all.

This is HPEs current answer to the absence of Windows SBS. It's Clarkconnect rebadged. It's a Linux AIO distro that does classic small business on prem tasks for the early 00s. It's relevance today is questionable at best outside of a niche history interest.

> ClearCenter & HPE partner to create the industry’s first Smart Server

Wow! A Smart Server! The industry is changed!

I wish they would unpack their buisiness jargon acronyms. What are SOHO, ROBO and SMB in this context?

SMB is Small-Medium Business; ROBO I don't know; SOHO I don't know but I think is Small & Home - meaning in networking is essentially 'not enterprise'.

Edit: Having now looked ar TFA, Home is listed before SOHO, so I might be wrong about that. Also in fairness SMB at least is defined on, er, second use.

SOHO = Small Office/Home Office

ROBO = Remote Office/Branch Office

thanks. thought they meant "server message block" at first and i'm like do i have to?

Another CentOS based distribution. Red Hat sets the Standard ;) (disclaimer: I am a Red Hatter.

I want to thank Red Hat for massacring the stability of CentOS after Scientific Linux closed shop. Real classy.

Even the CentOS co-founder Greg Kurtzer agrees that Red Hat did the right thing, but sure. https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/09/centos_stream_greg_ku...

That’s not my reading of that article. He thinks CentOS Stream is nice because it allows them to easily upstream RHEL bugfixes.

Nowhere in the interview does he say that killing off CentOS was a good idea.

Also, he has to work with the CentOS Stream people moving forward, so of course he’s going to speak diplomatically in public.

My reading of that article is that Greg Kurtzer says that Red Hat did the right thing for Red Hat, not for the community - it has had a negative effect on users.

>_"The end of life of CentOS as we know it had a negative effect on my company and my company's customers as well as pretty much everybody in the industry,"_ Kurtzer told The Register. "I felt it was important to take the lessons learned from CentOS and bring that into a new project... and I enjoy operating systems."

My company immediately transitioned to SLES immediately after the announcement that CentOS was dead. We do medical devices, and CentOS Stream was NOT going to work for us.

> Red Hat sets the Standard

Not so sure that's something you should be proud of, considering the kind of standards they are setting. Also, not so sure about how much standards they really are, if it's mostly the Red Hat customer base and fan club that considers these actual standards.

Is this supposed to be a Linux distro?

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