Let’s start with some background. NGINX Inc. was founded in July 2011 by Igor Sysoev, the original author of NGINX, and Maxim Konovalov to provide commercial products and support for the software.
It is part of F5 Networks Inc., which bought it in March 2019 for $670 million to help them evolve from a hardware company to a more services-focused one.
In August this year, F5 Networks Inc., which owns the rights to NGINX and is responsible for its development, discontinued its operations in Russia, leaving the market entirely.
Almost all of the developers in the Russia office have accepted offers to relocate to San Jose, California. However, things seem to have changed.
Some of the NGINX lead engineers have returned, and as a result, a new company, Web Server LLC, has been established with its flagship product – Angie web server. So, let’s see what we know about it so far.
Angie Web Server
Angie is an NGINX fork aiming to expand capability far beyond the original version. It can be used as an NGINX drop-in replacement, so you may use your existing NGINX configuration without making significant changes.
The initial stable version available for installation is Angie 1.0.0. The software is distributed under the BSD 2-Clause “Simplified” License and is freely available on the projectโs GitHub page. The license allows Angie to be used commercially for free, modified, distributed, and private use.
The Angie web server includes the following build-in modules:
- http_addition_module
- http_auth_request_module
- http_dav_module
- http_flv_module
- http_gunzip_module
- http_gzip_static_module
- http_mp4_module
- http_random_index_module
- http_realip_module
- http_secure_link_module
- http_slice_module
- http_ssl_module
- http_stub_status_module
- http_sub_module
- http_v2_module
- mail_ssl_module
- stream
- stream_realip_module
- stream_ssl_module
- stream_ssl_preread_module
Furthermore, users can also find the following dynamic modules in the projectโs GitHub repository:
- angie-module-geoip
- angie-module-geoip2
- angie-module-njs
For the time being, the Angie web server can only be installed on two Linux distributions: Ubuntu and Debian. More specifically, we are talking about Debian 10 (Buster), Debian 11 (Bullseye), Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa), and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish).
The projectโs GitHub repository enjoys active development; thus, the list of supported Linux distributions is expected to overgrow.
Finally, we’d like to point out that the original NGINX author, Igor Sysoev, has no involvement in either project. He officially left F5 Networks Inc. in January of this year to focus on personal projects and spend more time with family and friends.
You can obtain more information about the Angie web server from the project page.
