I am planning to purchase a license in the next few days but as I have read the support for Debian is not available as of yet.

I have a server that has yet to be deployed and would like to have the Virtualmin pro replacing my Virtualmin standard prior to deployment.
Will it be necessary to reconfigure the pro when moving from standard webmin and virtualmin?

My reason for wanting to purchase now would be to escalate bug fixes from the standard version into the Pro I have seen and posted into the SF bug system.

From what I had read in the posts that very soon Debian packages will be available (within the next week), is this still true and will they upgrade the packages that are being held in the Debian repo now on debian.org (I hope or at lesat conflict with)?

If the packages are not compatible with the Debian packages what will be not to handle this for migration?


Thanks
Philip S. Hempel

Hi Philip,

We'll look forward to having you as a customer, but you don't have to buy to submit issues to the bug-tracker. It is for users of both Virtualmin GPL and Virtualmin Professional.

I'm actually pretty enthusiastic about getting started on Debian, as it seems like it might turn out to be my favorite server OS (or perhaps a tie with Fedora and RHEL, but it definitely looks good so far). But Mandrake is scheduled before Debian, primarily because it is RPM-based and I expect it to be somewhat quicker and less disruptive to support than Debian. Nonetheless, things are moving pretty fast now, as the installer is becoming quite a bit more platform neutral as each new system is added. I would be surprised if it takes more than four weeks to get Debian into the installer, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it in two. (But then, if you've read any messages here about schedules, you'll know that I have a history of being wildly optimistic. I've gotta work on my "glass is half empty" reflex.)

On all of the systems I have gone to great lengths to provide packages that are compatible with the OS and existing packages. Debian will be a challenge because it already has Webmin packages, and worse, as far as I know, they are broken badly. Perhaps my first step will be to get myself involved with the Debian package maintainers and fix their Webmin package. But then, I have the problem that we are generally shipping the devel version, and Debian stable will need the stable release version. Life is hard sometimes.

Anyway, rest assured that we will work with the system and the package manager, cleanly. This is a huge difference between our product and every other product in this space, and now that I'm six months into developing an installation procedure in this way, I see why they've all taken the easy way out. However, customers were clear about wanting it done the Right Way, and I agree with them. So I'm slogging through every god-forsaken corner of every package manager in existence and learning way more about the quirks of each OS than any one person ought to have to know. When it's all done, it's going to be a gorgeous piece of infrastructure. ;-)

Well in the fact that your doing this for Debian.... you may also talk to the maintainer of the alien package.. he also has worked much with the package managers and he may have some insight for you as well.


So.. on of my goals is to lock in the early adapter price in this purchase I plan to make, can I just purchase the license and change to another OS later?

I like the price structure now, it will give me a starter provider a chance to get in at a price I can afford.

And to the doing it the right way.... this is why I do not like any of the other packages..I think it is very poor the way they run and the quality of services that the software provides is so poor that it makes a quad Xeon server act like it is a Pentium III 450 with 500 users.


If u would need any testers I am willing to provide package testing if you would like. I have a number of vmware configurations as well as my other hardware I have.

I have done some package management myself under Debian and I will say that the present state of the Debian webmin is slow to release under sid (the last was in may of this year) and seems to be better than it was at the beginning of its release into the wild.

So I suppose I will deploy my server with the GPL version. I do want the extras that come with the package Pro version so I will be patient..

Thanks and let me know if I can do the purchase for the non debian version and then change later..