Recently the launch of the new version of the Mattermost 6.0 messaging system was announced and in this new version some important improvements were made to the user interface, as well as the stabilization of new experimental functions.
For those unfamiliar with Mattermost, you should know that this is positioned as an open alternative to the Slack communication system and allows you to receive and send messages, files and images, track your conversation history and receive notifications on your smartphone or PC.
In addition to it supports out-of-the-box integrations, and a large collection of native modules is provided to integrate with Jira, GitHub, IRC, XMPP, Hubot, Giphy, Jenkins, GitLab, Trac, BitBucket, Twitter, Redmine, SVN, and RSS / Atom.
The project's server-side code is written in the Go language and is distributed under the MIT license. The web interface and mobile apps are written in JavaScript using React, the desktop client for Linux, Windows, and macOS is built on the Electron platform. MySQL and PostgreSQL can be used as DBMS.
Main new features of Mattermost 6.0
In this new version the user interface has been improved, as it now has a new navigation bar that makes it easier to work with channels, discussions, checklists (playbooks), projects / tasks and external integrations. Through the dashboard, you can also get quick access to searches, saved messages, recent mentions, settings, statuses, and profiles.
Another novelty that stands out is the support for many experimental functions has been stabilized and enabled by default such as plugins, archive channels, guest accounts, export of all downloads and messages, mmctl utility, delegating individual administrator roles to participants.
In the channels the preview of links to messages is implemented (the message is displayed below the link, which eliminates the need to go to to understand what is at stake).
By default, support for "Playbooks" is included, covering common job checklists for teams in various situations.
In addition, a full-screen interface has been implemented to work with checklists, in which you can immediately create new lists and order existing jobs, and the interface to evaluate the status of the job has been redesigned and the possibility of establishing a checklist has been provided. time to send reminders.
The project and task management interface is enabled by default, in which a new dashboard is implemented and a channel selection form is integrated in the sidebar. Analytic function support for tables is implemented.
Of the other changes that stand out:
- The desktop client has been updated to version 5.0, which offers a new interface for navigating through channels, playbooks, and tasks.
- Dependency requirements have been increased: the server now requires at least MySQL 5.7.12 (support for branch 5.6 is discontinued) and Elasticsearch 7 (support for branches 5 and 6 has been discontinued).
- Plugin prepared separately for use in Mattermost End-to-End Message Encryption (E2EE).
Finally if you want to know more about it, you can consult the following link.
How to install Mattermost on Linux?
For those interested in being able to install Mattermost on their system, should go to the official website of the application and in its download section you can find the sections for each supported Linux distribution (for the server).
While for the client the links for the different systems are offered desktop and mobile operating systems. The link is this.
As for the server package, We are offered packages for Ubuntu, Debian or RHEL, as well as an implementation option with Docker, but to obtain the package we must provide our email.
You can follow the following installation guide, it only differs in package installation, but configuration wise it is the same for any distro. The link is this.
On the client's side, for Linux we are currently offered a tar.gz package (for general use in Linux). Although the developers also offer preconfigured packages for Ubuntu and Debian.
wget https://releases.mattermost.com/6.0.1/mattermost-6.0.1-linux-amd64.tar.gz
In the case of the tar.gz package, just unzip the package and run the “mattermost-desktop” file inside the folder.
Finally for Arch Linux a package is already compiled for distribution or derivatives thereof, within the AUR repositories.
To obtain it, they only need to have the AUR repository enabled in their pacman.conf file and have yay installed.
The installation is done with the command:
yay mattermost-desktop