The Koozali SME Server development team, through Terry Fage, announced the release and immediate availability for download and testing of the first Release Candidate (RC) version of the upcoming SME Server 9.1 server-oriented operating system.

According to Mr. Fage, Koozali SME Server 9.1 Release Candidate 1 is now based on the latest, long-term supported CentOS 6.7 GNU/Linux distribution, which will be supported upstream with security patches and software updates until year 2020. Therefore, SME Server 9.1 will also be supported for a longer period.

"The Koozali SME Server (SME Server) development team is pleased to announce the release of SME Server 9.1rc1 which is based on CentOS 6.7," writes Terry Fage on the release announcement. "CentOS 6.# has an EOL of 20 Nov 2020. Bug reports and reports of potential bugs should be raised in the bug tracker (and only there, please)."

Among the major changes added in SME Server 9.1 RC1, we can mention a new functionality that allows the use a Dummy NIC for the internal network interface, the ability to check the update frequency of smecontribs via the server-manager, the addition of Windows 10 support for SME Domain, and the removal of SSLv3.

Available for 64-bit and 32-bit systems

Those of you interesting in testing this first Release Candidate of SME Server 9.1 are invited to download the Koozali SME Server 9.1 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) installation images in the standard ISO format for 32-bit and 64-bit hardware architectures right now from Softpedia.

When testing Koozali SME Server 9.1 RC1, please try to keep in mind that this is a pre-release version, which means that it might contains unresolved issues. Thus, it is not recommended to install the operating system on production machines where stability is of the essence. More details can be found in the official release notes.