News
Veyon 4.1 released
About 10 months after we launched Veyon 4.0.0 we’re happy to announce Veyon 4.1.0. First of all we would like to thank everyone who helped to make up this release, especially the people who kept on testing and giving feedback. The new 4.1.x release series brings major improvements and changes, most importantly regarding platform integration and administration. We already blogged about the most notable achievements in previous articles but of course we want to give you a summary of highlights you’ll find in this new release:
Customize your computer thumbnail arrangement
Maybe you have already read about the new features and improvements coming with Veyon 4.1 in previous articles. You might have noticed that most of the described changes “only” affect internal implementation details, administrative tasks or technical details regarding the operating system integration. While this is basically true we also have goodies for the end user (i.e. teachers). We’d like to present the most notable one in this article.
Managing network objects at the command line
If you use Veyon without LDAP/AD integration you always have to configure rooms and computers (in general also referred as network objects) manually. In Veyon 4.0 rooms and computers could only be added one by one using the graphical interface provided by Veyon Configurator. Starting with Veyon 4.1 there are additional possibilities which allow scripted and automated management of network objects.
Full systemd service support on Linux in Veyon 4.1
As you might have already read Veyon 4.1 will come with full systemd support. This means on Linux the Veyon Service can now be managed the same way as it has been possible on Windows for many years. Unlike typical Linux daemons/services such as SSH, HTTP or database servers the Veyon Service requires full access to graphical user sessions. Moreover it’s recommended to run the process as a different user (usually root) in order to prevent users from killing the process to avoid control by the instructor. These requirements made things a bit complicated and required some fundamental changes in the implementation.
Improved multi-platform support in Veyon 4.1
A recent change in our source code repository looks small and trivial but marks the beginning of a new era for Veyon. We no longer have any platform-specific code in neither the Veyon Core library nor any of the application components. All existing platform-specific code has been refactored into the respective platform plugins for Windows and Linux. This basically means we can add support for more platforms and operating systems such as macOS, Android etc. in the future by only developing an appropriate platform plugin (and preferably also a VNC server integration plugin).