SE and DE confusion and DE stability

[JuffMa]

I have searched for almost an hour now and couldn't find anything specific on this, so I thought I'd try asking here.

If you only go after the name you would asume that Stable Edition is the mainly recommended version to use and Developer Edition is an unstable testing ground that shouldn't be used. However stable edition hasn't received a release for over a year and the last beta will also be a year old next month.
Also you would expect most people to use SE but going after github stars and distros packaging softether DE seems to be the versions that is used more often, even a distro like debian that is known for its stability only packages softether DE and not SE.

So, is SE actually being recommended for most people? And also, is DE considered unstable, not in a way that it is less stable than SE but actually unstable in a sense that it is expected to be problematic to run long-term?

The way I currently see it you either get an outdated version that didn't receive any updates for the past year or an actively maintained version that the devs actively discourage using.

We don't want to be running "beta" software in production but software that didn't receive updates for a year also isn't a real alternative, the VPN wouldn't be crucial to operations but it would be used relatively often and missing features like WireGuard and better certificate auth would also not be the greatest news.

Am I missing something? I haven't found any specific clarification on what's the deal with this.

[solo]

SE is a mature 10yo project which needs no weekly bug fixes. I'd look at Comparison with Stable Edition and pick SE over DE if the new features are not required.

[JuffMa]

SE is a mature 10yo project which needs no weekly bug fixes. I'd look at Comparison with Stable Edition and pick SE over DE if the new features are not required.

I know and I don't expect SE to be updated weekly, not even monthly, it just seemed weird that the last release was over a year ago and the newest beta hasn't seen a corresponding release since almost a year.

The DE features wouldn't be a requirement but Wire guard is a requirement and it would simplify the setup if we didn't have to setup a separate VPN for wireguard (most people will not use it but a handful will need the higher speed).

So is DE considered stable enough to use in production if using its tagged releases? (They seem to release more or less monthly)

[solo]

Yes but keep in mind that unless you get the official Windows builds, your compiled version will miss out on a few functions:

DoS attack prevention function
User authentication with RADIUS/NT domain
RSA certificate authentication
Detailed packet logging feature
Connection source IP access control list function
Syslog forwarding function
Distributing static routes on a virtual DHCP server
+
Individual Certificate Authentication
+?...

[JuffMa]

So if I understand you correctly Linux builds of DE don't have support for NT authentication. But does NT auth only mean legacy NT4 domains or LDAP/AD Domains because LDAP/AD is a hard requirement for us and would warrant using SE instead.

[JuffMa]

Ok after reading more I'm even more confused, when reading the translated japanese websites it reads like Softether is just an foss freeware for the commercial PacketixVPN, however going on the international PacketixVPN website it just links you to a product page that does no longer exist.

Also when reading the international softether.org website and the github it looks like all features are available without a paywall so what is going on here? Does the entire foss version not include stuff like radius or active directory/NT4? Or am I misunderstanding?

[solo]

https://github.com/SoftEtherVPN/SoftEth ... 1017588749

[JuffMa]

https://github.com/SoftEtherVPN/SoftEth ... 1017588749

Ok that is very helpful, if I understand correctly that means that SE only includes this functionality in pre-compiled builds and deactivates it if running on a japanese ip while DE always includes it.

In that case we will propably use DE and switch to SE + seperate WireGuard if we encounter any stability issues.

[jeffshead]

In that case we will propably use DE and switch to SE + seperate WireGuard if we encounter any stability issues.

I'm new here and have the same concerns. Did you try DE and SE? Any stability issues with DE?

Thanks!