The developers of the CentOS-based NethServer open-source server-oriented operating system have announced the immediate availability for download and testing of the first Release Candidate (RC) build of the upcoming NethServer 6.7 OS.

According to the release notes, NethServer 6.7 RC1 has been built using the minimal ISO image of the CentOS 6.7 operating system, an open-source distribution derived from the freely distributed sources of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OS, which means that it inherits all of the upstream updates and security patches.

Shorewall Firewall is the new default firewall, which lets users create a red interface without the need to install additional packages, the Italian language has been removed from the ISO image, and the old and insecure SSLv2 and SSLv3 ciphers are now disabled by default on the operating system.

"The ISO is built on CentOS 6.7 minimal ISO, and contains additional NethServer packages from 6.6 and 6.7 beta1 branch. I installed it successfully on a VM, following the unattended install method. After reboot everything worked as expected, from First configuration Wizard to installation of additional modules from the Software Center," reads the announcement.

NethServer 6.6 users can update now

Furthermore, the first Release Candidate build of the upcoming NethServer 6.7 GNU/Linux operating system moves the firewall web interface to the nethserver-firewall-base-ui package, as well as the password policy's web interface to the nethserver-directory package. Many other issues reported by users since the previous development build have been addressed in this release.

If you wish to take the first Release Candidate of NethServer 6.7 for a test drive right now, you can download the installation media for 64-bit (x86_64) platforms via Softpedia, but please try to keep in mind that it is a pre-release version, not suitable for production use. Alternatively, there are detailed upgrade instructions from NethServer 6.6 on the project's website.