.. _history: ####### History ####### In the beginning... =================== There was a network operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux, called Vyatta. [*]_ Introduced in 2006, it served as a great free-software alternative to proprietary products. Vyatta came in two editions: Vyatta Core (formerly known as Vyatta Community Edition), which was free software, and Vyatta Subscription Edition, which included proprietary features and was available only to paying customers. Brocade Communications Systems acquired Vyatta in 2012. Shortly after, Brocade renamed Vyatta Subscription Edition to Brocade vRouter, discontinued Vyatta Core, and shut down the community forum without notice. The bug tracker and Git repositories were closed the following year. By the time Brocade acquired Vyatta, the development of Vyatta Core had already stagnated. The focus had shifted to Vyatta Subscription Edition, where core components were replaced with proprietary software. As a result, Vyatta Core received fewer new features, and some of those added faced issues. In 2013, shortly after Vyatta Core was discontinued, the community forked its final version (6.6R1) to create the VyOS project. In 2014, the maintainers established a company to fund VyOS development through technical support, consulting services, and LTS release access subscriptions. The company was originally named Sentrium and was later reorganized under the VyOS brand. Major releases ============== VyOS originally named its major versions after elements by atomic number. Beginning with version 1.2, this naming scheme was changed. It now uses the Latin names of constellations recognized by the International Astronomical Union (`IAU `_), ordered by their solid angle area, beginning with the smallest. Hydrogen (1.0) -------------- Released just in time for the holidays on 22 December 2013, Hydrogen was the first major VyOS release. It fixed features that were broken in Vyatta Core 6.6, such as IPv4 BGP peer groups and DHCPv6 relay, and introduced command scripting, a task scheduler, and web proxy LDAP authentication. Helium (1.1) ------------ Helium, released on 9 October 2014, marked the first anniversary of the VyOS Project. The release introduced an event handler, L2TPv3 support, 802.1ad (QinQ), and IGMP proxy, as well as experimental support for VXLAN and DMVPN. Notably, DMVPN remained non-functional in Vyatta Core due to its reliance on a proprietary NHRP implementation. Crux (1.2) ---------- Crux (the Southern Cross) was released on 28 January 2019 and marked a departure from legacy Vyatta codebase and the start of the migration from Perl to Python as the primary language. The underlying base system was upgraded from Debian 6 (Squeeze) to Debian 8 (Jessie). Crux introduced many new features, some of the most noteworthy are: an mDNS repeater, a broadcast relay, a high-performance PPPoE server, an HFSC scheduler, and support for Wireguard, unicast VRRP, RPKI for BGP, and fully 802.1ad-compliant QinQ ethertype. The telnet server and support for P2P filtering were removed. Crux was the first VyOS release to feature a modular image build system. CLI definitions were written using an XML syntax automatically checked against a schema at build time. Python APIs were introduced for command scripting and configuration migration. New Perl code and old-style (non-XML) command definition were no longer accepted from that point. Crux reached the end of support in 2023. Equuleus (1.3) -------------- Equuleus (the Little Horse) was a long-term support version released on 21 December 2021, just in time for the winter holidays. Equuleus brought many long-awaited features, most notably an SSTP VPN server, an IPoE server, an OpenConnect VPN server, and a serial console server. It also introduced reworked support for WWAN interfaces, support for GENEVE and MACSec interfaces, VRF, IS-IS routing, and preliminary support for MPLS and LDP. Equuleus reached the end of support in 2025. Sagitta (1.4) ------------- Sagitta (the Arrow), released in 2024, is currently a supported LTS release. Circinus (1.5) -------------- Circinus (the Drawing Compass) is the codename for the upcoming development branch. VyOS 1.5 Circinus has not been released yet. A note on copyright =================== Unlike Vyatta, VyOS has never had closed-source code and never will. The only proprietary material in VyOS is non-code assets, such as graphics and the trademark "VyOS". [*]_ Note that we do not provide support for images distributed by a third party. See the `artwork license `_ and the end-user license agreement at ``/usr/share/vyos/EULA`` in any pre-built image for more information. .. [*] From the Sanskrit adjective "Vyātta" (व्यात्त), meaning opened. .. [*] This is similar to how Linus Torvalds owns the Linux trademark.