📣 WinBox 4 is here 📣

teslasystems · Mon Mar 24, 2025 7:15 pm

But...this is unfair:
They suggested to use CLI, it has syntax highlighting, but it's buggy as hell and unusable.
I don't think the the CLI /system/script/edit is "buggy".

I just said as it is. When I was trying to edit script source in CLI and navigating through the code using up/down arrows, it becomes a total mess. One part of a code may appear in another part of a window, some parts are clipped, some letters can be taken from one line and painted on another line, etc. It's unusable. And it's same in both v3 and v4, so it's a RouterOS problem, not WinBox.

UPD: not 100 % sure, but probably this happens when you have tab characters in the code.
For example, if you have this useless script (note tab characters in lines 6-10)

:local var1
:local var2
:local var3
:local var4
:local var5
	:local var6
	:local var7
	:local var8
	:local var9
	:local var10
:local var11
:local var12
:local var13
:local var14
:local var15
:local var16
:local var17
:local var18
:local var19
:local var20

and try to edit it in CLI, it looks ok initially
.

Initial.png

but then, if you scroll down below line 13, it looks like this:
.

AfterScrollDown.png

eworm · Mon Mar 24, 2025 7:30 pm

I use the editor from CLI via ssh, no issues there. So I do not agree about the RouterOS issue.

teslasystems · Mon Mar 24, 2025 7:45 pm

I use the editor from CLI via ssh, no issues there. So I do not agree about the RouterOS issue.

Same issues in PuTTY via SSH.
.

Amm0 · Mon Mar 24, 2025 8:02 pm

I use the editor from CLI via ssh, no issues there. So I do not agree about the RouterOS issue.
Same issues in PuTTY via SSH.

I suspect if you look at the script source as hex or byte-array, you'll find some \t or \n without \r\n.

:put [:convert to=hex [/system/script/get SCRIPTNAME source]]

If you find something in CLI editor wrong, it totally worth it to file a support case and let Mikrotik sort it out. But I suspect it's that other editor are more flexible on line-endings than /system/script/edit which uses RouterOS windows-style \r\n.

But that a different issue that part we likely all agree on fixed font and "colors"

teslasystems · Mon Mar 24, 2025 8:32 pm

Yes, there are tab characters (0x09), I said about them in my example.
From what I see, RouterOS doesn't erase previous background under tab character. I've mentiioned this issue after MT suggested to use CLI in my support ticket about adding syntax highlighting, but they just ignored it...

fischerdouglas · Mon Mar 24, 2025 9:36 pm

As I said in my previous post:

Simple suggestions related to Scripts screen in WinBox4

CLI editor in RouterOS, even on terminal of Winbox, its not a "WinBox4" thing.

So, please, Keep it simple(at least for a first try.). Stay focused on Script text field.

Monospaced (Just in that text box field, for the alignment porpoise.)
Line numbers (I imagine is piece of cake.)
And XY cursor position. (Also piece of cake.)

pe1chl · Tue Mar 25, 2025 12:17 am

Well, of course there are two components involved in the editing:
- the RouterOS /system/script/edit
- the WinBOX terminal emulator
When the two are not operating well together, it is a bug that should be solved.
It is not yet clear in which of the two the bug is. Maybe someone who considers it important can test it further.

infabo · Tue Mar 25, 2025 10:15 am

Get some serious terminal emulator (not putty or winbox terminal). Then you won't see/have any issues.

URXVT

2025-03-25_09-12.png

KITTY

2025-03-25_09-14.png

rextended · Tue Mar 25, 2025 10:25 am

The bug is the same, well know...
do not use other characters than \r, \n <SPACE>! etc. until the ~ because on RouterOS are unsupported and rended differently on various terminal/winbox/script, etc.

infabo · Tue Mar 25, 2025 10:39 am

To me, the TAB character feels like an archaic relic from a time when every single bit had to be carefully conserved.

teslasystems · Tue Mar 25, 2025 10:51 am

To me, the TAB character feels like an archaic relic from a time when every single bit had to be carefully conserved.

The tab character is normally used for code readability.

infabo · Tue Mar 25, 2025 10:56 am

The tab character is often preferred by those who want the flexibility to adjust indentation to their personal preference.

jbl42 · Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:18 am

Most posters here do not have SW development background, so we get those funny statements about "archaic tab characters".
As I think we can agree that script edit in Winbox terminal should not mess up the code layout scrolling up and down in script code. So let's treat this as a bug report. Same for using proportional fonts in script edit boxes in Winbox.

At least for end users (I suppose MT has something better internally to create large default config scripts) scripting beyond a few simple lines always was hard: No proper error reporting, no way to end a script in the control flow without showing an error, no line numbers, no syntax check without running a script, no means for debugging except printing debug messages to log, etc.

pe1chl · Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:25 am

Get some serious terminal emulator (not putty or winbox terminal). Then you won't see/have any issues.

Ok, that hints that the bug is actually not in RouterOS but in the terminal emulator part of WinBox 4.
So those that claimed "not a WinBox bug, go away!" were probably wrong.

pe1chl · Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:28 am

The tab character is often preferred by those who want the flexibility to adjust indentation to their personal preference.

Any other TAB width than 8 is seriously broken!
It usually isn't workable to change indentation by changing TAB width anyway, e.g. due to comments in the right margin.
Today, often TAB is converted to the proper amount of spaces immediately on input, so you don't have to worry about it later....

infabo · Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:29 am

Yes, this is more a TAB vs SPACES debate. It should be possible to use TABs and not mess the output of Winbox Terminal window.

teslasystems · Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:34 am

No proper error reporting, no way to end a script in the control flow without showing an error, no line numbers, no syntax check without running a script, no means for debugging except printing debug messages to log, etc.

Fully agree, but error reporting was recently improved a lot by adding line and character number to error log message. This really simplifies debugging compared to previous behavior.

Get some serious terminal emulator (not putty or winbox terminal). Then you won't see/have any issues.

KITTY

Ok, that hints that the bug is actually not in RouterOS but in the terminal emulator part of WinBox 4.
So those that claimed "not a WinBox bug, go away!" were probably wrong.

Tried KiTTY, same stuff. You are doing something wrong. It's a RouterOS bug, not WinBox terminal or other terminal.
.

kitty.png

infabo · Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:36 am

You probably confused. Windows KiTTY is a PuTTY clone (or whatever - https://www.9bis.net/kitty/index.html).

I am talking about https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/

Get some WSL terminal and you are good - even on Windows. It is not a ROS bug per se. Maybe their SSH server is not fully compatible with Windows SSH clients.

pe1chl · Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:52 am

Maybe their SSH server is not fully compatible with Windows SSH clients.

This is not an SSH level problem! SSH is only responsible for secure transport of the terminal bytestream, a successor to TELNET.
(in the old days we used serial RS232 lines for the same purpose)

What matters is the "terminal emulator", the part that sits on top of the SSH/TELNET/SERIAL connection and interprets the incoming characters. When it sees a hex 41 it displays an A. When it sees a hex 20 it shows a space.
What matters here is what it does when it sees a 09 (TAB). And of course other sequences like ESC [ n; n; C that control the cursor position, text and background color, etc.
There are "test programs" that generate complicated sequences to test if a terminal emulator works according to (ANSI) standard.

infabo · Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:58 am

What matters is the "terminal emulator", the part that sits on top of the SSH/TELNET/SERIAL connection and interprets the incoming characters.

From my experience, I would have said the same. I worked with Windows for a long time (back when WSL didn’t exist) and had countless display issues with PuTTY/Kitty - just terrible. But I had to live with. Since switching to Linux for work, I’ve never had such problems again. I’m not talking specifically about ROS and SSH, but SSH connections to servers in general. I think using WSL with any terminal emulator should also work without issues.

patrikg · Tue Mar 25, 2025 12:31 pm

In windows now, you can just start powershell or cmd and type in ssh admin@192.168.88.1, and you get connected.
These terminal windows has some support for ANSI, to support the ESC commands.
Windows now even comes with openssh server if you wish to connect your computer via ssh.
If you start powershell as Administrator, and put these powershell commands you be fine.

# Install OpenSSH Client & Server
Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name "OpenSSH.Server~~~~0.0.1.0"
Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name "OpenSSH.Client~~~~0.0.1.0"

# Start the ssh server service.
Start-Service -Name "sshd"

# Set the ssh service as persistent.
Set-Service -Name "sshd" -StartupType "Automatic"

pe1chl · Tue Mar 25, 2025 4:32 pm

In Linux, the functionality of "terminal emulator" and "ssh connection" are completely separate.
You start a terminal emulator like xfce4-terminal or Konsole or xterm or whatever you like, usually with a shell running in it, and from there you start a connection using ssh or telnet or minicom or whatever. You can combine them in any way you want to.
In Windows, those two functions tend to be integrated in one program (like PuTTY or telnet.exe) and of course are of substandard quality.
It would be interesting to try the above method of setting up an ssh session from Windows and see how it performs with the script editor.

teslasystems · Tue Mar 25, 2025 4:49 pm

You probably confused. Windows KiTTY is a PuTTY clone (or whatever - https://www.9bis.net/kitty/index.html).

I am talking about https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/

Get some WSL terminal and you are good - even on Windows. It is not a ROS bug per se. Maybe their SSH server is not fully compatible with Windows SSH clients.

OK, tried on Ubuntu, here it is:

urxvt:
.

ubuntu_urxvt.png

kitty:
.

ubuntu_kitty.png

And same stuff happens when connecting to the router via physical serial port, so it's not related to ssh.

As was said, it's a RouterOS bug.

In windows now, you can just start powershell or cmd and type in ssh admin@192.168.88.1, and you get connected.

Thank you, didn't know about that. Anyway, the mentioned bug has a place in powershell also.

Amm0 · Tue Mar 25, 2025 4:55 pm

As was said, it's a RouterOS bug.

Maybe. No point arguing here. Open a new ticket with the exact problem you're see... since, yes, sometime it does take a few rounds in a ticket to convince them. But they do fix something if there is clear repo case in a ticket.

pe1chl · Wed Mar 26, 2025 12:04 pm

Feature request: allow the user to add custom buttons to the toolbar (stored in the workspace file) that run a specified RouterOS command when clicked.
Minimal implementation would be to specify a custom button with only a "text", which would then do a /system/script/run "text".
So you can make a script "backup" and add a button "backup" to the toolbar, when clicked it would run the script to make a backup.
(more versatile could be to have separate specification of the button text and the full RouterOS command to run when clicked)

atropos89 · Wed Mar 26, 2025 2:13 pm

is there any change to
have winbox,dude,netinstall and other utilities on aarch64 ?

thanks

lilw · Thu Mar 27, 2025 2:23 am

This new version UI is very interesting. But I missed some features from v3.
1. Inline comment for separated windows (not global)
2. Table sort based on 2 columns like v3. Now I can only sort 1 column at a time and it is difficult to monitor.
3. Option to wrap text, allow change width and height for each table. some content is wrapped, some don't

infabo · Thu Mar 27, 2025 3:00 pm

@teslasystems I am not able to reproduce this bug. But I have to admit, I only have ROS 7.13.5 for testing this right now. Maybe the bug does not exist in that ROS version. I made sure to enter the TAB character and make terminal height as small as possible. But no matter how hard I try, I don't see this glitch.

teslasystems · Thu Mar 27, 2025 3:37 pm

@teslasystems I am not able to reproduce this bug. But I have to admit, I only have ROS 7.13.5 for testing this right now. Maybe the bug does not exist in that ROS version. I made sure to enter the TAB character and make terminal height as small as possible. But no matter how hard I try, I don't see this glitch.

In 7.13.5 it's unstable. Sometimes the problem appears, sometimes not. Depends on terminal window height, but doesn't depend on terminal itself, it's same in all SSH clients and WinBox. Also noticed, that in this version one extra empty line is added after each line. Strange.
Anyway, reported once again about this issue.

toxicfusion · Thu Mar 27, 2025 7:51 pm

No updates from 'Tik on Winbox? I hope they're going back to drawing board. It needs work, even as a beta [cough Alpha release]. Others are innovating and gaining market share. We're currently testing OPNSense hardware appliances.... also other vendors.

https://www.deciso.com/wp-content/uploa ... series.pdf

Fri Mar 28, 2025 2:52 am

No updates from 'Tik on Winbox? I hope they're going back to drawing board. It needs work, even as a beta [cough Alpha release]. Others are innovating and gaining market share. We're currently testing OPNSense hardware appliances.... also other vendors.

https://www.deciso.com/wp-content/uploa ... series.pdf

I don't think they are going back to the drawing board, they have a good foundation with WinBox 4.

In your previous posts I have noticed you often refer to Palo Alto Networks, OPNSense and other Enterprise/SMB firewalls, I think you may be forgetting that Mikrotik's primary market is not as an enterprise firewall, and that they have almost 30 years of history making RouterOS.

RouterOS users have come to love the workflows that exist in WinBox and expect these. While WinBox 4 is not perfect, Mikrotik are taking our feedback seriously, where it makes sense and falls in line with their history as well as future vision.

I expect that over the beta period WinBox 4 will improve to the point where the workflows are similar to WinBox 3 and the majority of users will be able to daily-drive WinBox 4. Will it turn into an Enterprise Firewall style UI for the "Monkey Clicks Button" ex Desktop admin types ? I don't think so and I certainly hope not.

Fri Mar 28, 2025 10:34 am

Thank you for your post, nz_monkey

woland · Tue Apr 01, 2025 11:33 am

In your previous posts I have noticed you often refer to Palo Alto Networks, OPNSense and other Enterprise/SMB firewalls, I think you may be forgetting that Mikrotik's primary market is not as an enterprise firewall, and that they have almost 30 years of history making RouterOS.

RouterOS users have come to love the workflows that exist in WinBox and expect these. While WinBox 4 is not perfect, Mikrotik are taking our feedback seriously, where it makes sense and falls in line with their history as well as future vision.

While I agree that Winbox does not need to get similar to any other firewall management client, it would certainly be clever for MT to watch, how others are designing their user interfaces.
I would love to see more advanced filtering, sorting , multi select/paste, export/import (csv/cleartext) features from every table, but especially from IP/Firewall.

nmt1900 · Tue Apr 01, 2025 1:11 pm

I expect that over the beta period WinBox 4 will improve to the point where the workflows are similar to WinBox 3 and the majority of users will be able to daily-drive WinBox 4. Will it turn into an Enterprise Firewall style UI for the "Monkey Clicks Button" ex Desktop admin types ? I don't think so and I certainly hope not.

If one calls real enterprise grade equipment interfaces "monkey-clicks-button" then Mikrotik can be perceived as complete toy - at least what comes to logging, log filtering and lack of any analyzing tools. Of course both of these statements are not exactly true...

Main thing with Winbox 4 has to be getting rid of bugs that can cause data loss or mess up the configuration. That's far more important than polishing the exteriour.

teslasystems · Tue Apr 01, 2025 6:17 pm

That's far more important than polishing the exteriour.

When exterior is unusable by design, I don't see much sense in doing anything else...

Amm0 · Tue Apr 01, 2025 7:04 pm

Main thing with Winbox 4 has to be getting rid of bugs that can cause data loss or mess up the configuration. That's far more important than polishing the exteriour.

I've use WinBox4 since it came out and never find the need to use WinBox3... while it certainly missing new/improved functionality, many quibbles about tabs/dialog/keyboard/etc/etc, or even questioning need to re-create the same winbox (*when a new Dude/controller was the need).

But in fairness... WinBox4 is pretty "stable" and "data loss" has been NOT been a major or even minor issue. Now, I cannot say same about iOS app... that I feel is "risky" for data loss - but have NOT see "data loss" in WinBox4.

szaboistvan007 · Tue Apr 01, 2025 10:59 pm

Log filtering doesn't return results, although the filtered item size shows on the bottom part of the window

Screenshot 2025-04-01 at 22.57.27.png

nmt1900 · Wed Apr 02, 2025 12:55 am

I had the same problem and was ready to write a ticket - but after next login it started to work again. There's definitely something not quite right in log display window

fischerdouglas · Thu Apr 03, 2025 11:57 am

I would love to see more advanced filtering, sorting , multi select/paste, export/import (csv/cleartext) features from every table, but especially from IP/Firewall.

One thing I would love?

Select items from a grid of configuration items, press CTRL+C, and it will copy-paste the selected items into the buffer as a "/export terse".

A practical example of use with Firewall Rules:

You log into a device that already has the rules you need and know they are OK, select only the entries you want, CTRL+C.
You log into the device you want to apply the rules to, CTRL+V.
And now, all you need to do is reorder the newly inserted rules.

Note: And if do a CTRL+V on a text editor, it would paste the "export" text in the buffer on the text editor.

But it is important to think about doing this in the entire Winbox4 Framework.
Everywhere that has a grid of configuration items, this should be possible.

Obviously, this is not a simple thing to do! Even narrowing the scope as I exemplified in the case of Firewall rules is already somewhat complex. Imagine for other scenarios, for example in grids that have persistent configuration items, and dynamic items such as Routes, Queues, DHCP-Leases.

Well, I'm not bringing the complete solution here.
Just a feature request.

P.S.: Some other vendors, in their management consoles, have similar features. I'm trying to remember exactly which one, but I think it was the old Cisco PIX console. Or was it ForcePoint? I don't remember... But I remember that the Objects came out in text in a "weird" format, I think it was an XML with a MIME, or something like that.

pe1chl · Thu Apr 03, 2025 12:09 pm

Well, the whole topic of "how do I setup a number of similar routers" and "how do I migrate my existing router config to the new shiny box that I bought" certainly deserves a bit more attention!
For skilled users it is possible to export a config, edit it, and paste it into a new router terminal window. But for the average person that is far too difficult.
Even pasting "additional config" that I generate on a website for users of our network proves to be too much, usually when I get contacted to solve their problems it turns out they have pasted the config multiple times. In some places that results in unused extra lines (e.g. firewall, routing filters), in some places that results in outright errors (routing tables), and generally it does not work well.
And our users are technical (but usually not network-technical) people.

pohutukawa · Fri Apr 04, 2025 6:28 am

Apologies if this has been covered here before, or if there is a more appropriate place to post feedback about Winbox4.

What I'm wondering is whether a preference can be included to *not* pre-populate the connection settings on the left with the last-used address, credentials, etc.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious but this would appear to be a security issue for password-protected, saved connection configurations.

Cheers.

nmt1900 · Fri Apr 04, 2025 12:21 pm

Passwords are not shown on left side if address list is password-protected and is not unlocked. There was a bug related to this but it is fixed more than one release ago.

4wojtek5 · Fri Apr 04, 2025 8:49 pm

I don't know where to report this but in winbox4 (in winbox3 works normally) in wndows like dhcp-server / leases and firewall / filter, Ctrl+D and Ctrl+E doesn't disable and enable rules, and it's frustrating because i have muscle memory for quick disabling of rules for testing and others. pls fix, Thanks!

pohutukawa · Fri Apr 04, 2025 10:15 pm

Passwords are not shown on left side if address list is password-protected and is not unlocked. There was a bug related to this but it is fixed more than one release ago.

The last-used connection details are populated on the left on startup. The password is not shown but it present. One needs only to click CONNECT to use the last-used connection details.

Zergling · Sat Apr 05, 2025 2:28 pm

I would have an interesting proposition to implement. 📣
If you are already making a new Winbox, I would suggest that in one Winbox you could open connections to different routers, and switching between them was done using tabs - like in browsers. Of course, tabs placed in the title bar to make good use of space - like in most new browsers.

For me personally adding "inline comments" globally is not the best idea. Sometimes I prefer inline comments, like in "address-list", but on the other hand I don't like them in "filter rules".

bajodel · Sat Apr 05, 2025 2:45 pm

I proposed that some weeks ago, it would be quite useful, definitely something that might improve cleanliness in our desktop.
I agree on the "inline comments" as well, it's not one-fit-all.

TenaciousD · Sun Apr 06, 2025 12:47 pm

+1 for tabs.

Just because I don't like how Gnome or Windows manage multi-window'ed applications. KDE is almost adequate :-)

So, tabs with a simple tab search function would help a lot in most environments IMHO :-)

eugenq · Sun Apr 06, 2025 10:55 pm

Menu files
Copy and drop doesn't work

nmt1900 · Mon Apr 07, 2025 6:53 pm

I would have an interesting proposition to implement. 📣
If you are already making a new Winbox, I would suggest that in one Winbox you could open connections to different routers, and switching between them was done using tabs - like in browsers. Of course, tabs placed in the title bar to make good use of space - like in most new browsers.

Different sessions in tabs inside same window can be acceptable idea if there is a choice to use same window or separate windows. The point of separate windows is ability to see different sessions simultaneously - which is not possible if they are in tabs of a single window like in web browser .Web browsers do have the ability to open multiple windows after all - so ability to use multiple windows should be normal to expect in case of Winbox as well...

fischerdouglas · Mon Apr 07, 2025 9:23 pm

Different sessions in tabs inside same window can be acceptable idea if there is a choice to use same window or separate windows. The point of separate windows is ability to see different sessions simultaneously - which is not possible if they are in tabs of a single window like in web browser .Web browsers do have the ability to open multiple windows after all - so ability to use multiple windows should be normal to expect in case of Winbox as well...

Safe-Mode is the best example for that.
On session can be over Safe-Mode, but other can be not on Safe-Mode.

To me, it is very frequent to have two sessions simultaneously on the same router.
Especially over CLI.

sxtlhglte · Mon Apr 14, 2025 1:26 am

I would like to love winbox 4 but my muscle memory is just too strong from winbox 3.. but keep,up,good work

masterofselflockout · Wed Apr 16, 2025 3:17 am

First, I want to say that having a winbox version for Linux is very much appreciated.

I don't know if it's also like that on Windows, but the "save password" feature on the connection menu is honestly non-existant. Everything is stored in plain text to "~/.local/share/MikroTik/WinBox/Addresses.cdb". It doesn't need to be some infallible quantum safe solution, but at least something that would put the risk on the password strength instead of relying on the good security practices of people.

As it is now, I think it would be preferable to remove the option entirely until a better solution is implemented.
You could, for example, make use of `mkpassword` somehow to hash the password before writing it to the file, use pgp to encrypt the whole thing or simply remove it.

To verify my claim:

strings ~/.local/share/MikroTik/WinBox/Addresses.cdb

Thank you,

Wed Apr 16, 2025 8:42 am

Yes, encryption funcion is not yet implemented, but you can open WinBox3, set "Master Password", then use WInbox4 and passwords will be encrypted

pe1chl · Wed Apr 16, 2025 12:56 pm

Do you mean that we do that in winbox3 BEFORE we import the addresses into winbox4?
Or does it mean that it is safe to share the Addresses.cdb file between winbox3 and winbox4 e.g. using a symbolic link?

sten · Wed Apr 16, 2025 3:38 pm

Winbox IPv6 connectivity, when?
Its 2025, i shouldn't have to resort to IPv4 to manage an IPv6 forwarding device.

pe1chl · Wed Apr 16, 2025 4:41 pm

With today's networking libraries you actually have to make effort to NOT support IPv6...
(like unnecessarily "validating" addresses before handing them over to the library)

nmt1900 · Wed Apr 16, 2025 5:00 pm

IPv6 connection does work if address is put in brackets like this

[2001:db8::1]

It is same with WinBox 3 and WinBox4

spippan · Fri Apr 18, 2025 4:11 pm

Winbox IPv6 connectivity, when?
Its 2025, i shouldn't have to resort to IPv4 to manage an IPv6 forwarding device.

this is already here for ages

KiwiBloke · Sat Apr 19, 2025 5:36 am

Just a quick question for those software developers out there...

What is a reasonable time frame to complete a beta to official? I know it took GIMP 7 years to migrate from 2.10 to 3, but they were an incredibly small team of volunteers who contributed as they could. MT have been working on v4 since last August - almost a year now and still haven't got close to an official release. And they are a commercial outfit with paid staff presumably working 40 hours a week on the project.

If we are lucky, we might see one update every few weeks, which for reasons just given seems to me to be unacceptable.

There maybe those who argue that this is free software, but I would contend that it's not. My reasoning being that it's a utlity that is required to configure devices we buy. In other words, we pay for Winbox when we buy MT products. We can't use Winbox with any other products. So, yes, we pay for Winbox.

So, I'm really curious how this works in a software dev world. What is the reasonable time frame between a beta release and an official release? Is there even such a thing?

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have Winbox - especially for Linux, but the time frame for at least releasing updates (let alone finalising the release) seem to be taking the piss a bit.

Cheers.

pe1chl · Sat Apr 19, 2025 9:54 am

What is a reasonable time frame to complete a beta to official? I know it took GIMP 7 years to migrate from 2.10 to 3, but they were an incredibly small team of volunteers who contributed as they could. MT have been working on v4 since last August - almost a year now and still haven't got close to an official release. And they are a commercial outfit with paid staff presumably working 40 hours a week on the project.

We don't know how many developers are on the project, how many hours a week they spend on it, and if it even is a project with defined specifications and delivery time...
It may well be a sidejob of one or two people working at support, and dividing up their time between handling tickets and working on this.
Also, when working in a company there always tend to be distractions like "important customers who need something quickly".

KiwiBloke · Sat Apr 19, 2025 11:21 am

We don't know how many developers are on the project, how many hours a week they spend on it, and if it even is a project with defined specifications and delivery time...
It may well be a sidejob of one or two people working at support, and dividing up their time between handling tickets and working on this.
Also, when working in a company there always tend to be distractions like "important customers who need something quickly".

Thanks for your very reasoned reply. Maybe then, considering the time this has taken already, the smart money would be allocating 1-2 full-time staff to the project until final release? That way, what might take many, many more months or years currently, might only take a few weeks instead. That way they get a release out in short order satifying their customer base, and then those who were working on this project could be seconded elsewhere.

What MT risk is the longer this takes the more likely their customer base will shrink, if it's not already happening. I suspect they don't really care though about customer retention.

pe1chl · Sat Apr 19, 2025 11:43 am

Your assumption is that customers buy their MikroTik hardware (or do not walk away from MikroTik) based on the existence of a new version of WinBox... but that isn't necessarily true.
I am using winbox3 for production use myself, and only try winbox4 now and then to see how it develops.
Other users prefer to use WebFig or CLI. It is not like WinBox 4 is critical software.
Personally I would be happier when developers worked on BGP bug fixes (especially after 7.16), each has their own preference.

teslasystems · Sat Apr 19, 2025 11:50 am

That's right, it's not critical for now. Moreover, it's unusable for now. But if MT won't change this sh*tty design, and if some day WinBox 3 will become a brick, then their customer base will probably decrease a little bit. At least -1 (me).

mfro · Sat Apr 19, 2025 4:32 pm

Since I could not find any list of requirements to run WinBox on linux, and since it is specifically a bit of a pain on Fedora to determine all of the necessary packages, I will post the list of packages I needed to install here. All were available in default repos.

libxkbcommon
libxkbcommon-x11
libxcb
xcb-util-renderutil
xcb-util-keysyms
xcb-util-image
xcb-util-wm

There may have been more packages needed that I already had installed but I think it's likely this covers it. I am running a very fresh install of fedora xfce.

patrikg · Sat Apr 19, 2025 7:20 pm

If you do this, you can see what libs being used and loaded.
Have removed the links in this list though.

ldd WinBox | cut -f2 | cut -f1 -d' ' | sort
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
libbrotlicommon.so.1
libbrotlidec.so.1
libbz2.so.1.0
libc.so.6
libdl.so.2
libEGL.so.1
libexpat.so.1
libfontconfig.so.1
libfreetype.so.6
libGLdispatch.so.0
libglib-2.0.so.0
libGL.so.1
libGLX.so.0
libgraphite2.so.3
libharfbuzz.so.0
libm.so.6
libpcre2-8.so.0
libpng16.so.16
libpthread.so.0
librt.so.1
libX11.so.6
libX11-xcb.so.1
libXau.so.6
libxcb-glx.so.0
libxcb-icccm.so.4
libxcb-image.so.0
libxcb-keysyms.so.1
libxcb-randr.so.0
libxcb-render.so.0
libxcb-render-util.so.0
libxcb-shape.so.0
libxcb-shm.so.0
libxcb.so.1
libxcb-sync.so.1
libxcb-util.so.1
libxcb-xfixes.so.0
libxcb-xkb.so.1
libXdmcp.so.6
libxkbcommon.so.0
libxkbcommon-x11.so.0
libz.so.1
linux-vdso.so.1

Cha0s · Sat Apr 19, 2025 10:16 pm

MT have been working on v4 since last August - almost a year now and still haven't got close to an official release.

MikroTik will one day, out the blue, just promote Winbox to be out of beta, even if there will most certainly be tons of issues, bugs, missing features, etc.

That's just the way they do software.

If it works for you, be happy that it exists. Don't expect anything. It may take a week for something you need to be implemented, or it may take years or never. You can never be sure with MikroTik.

If it doesn't work for you (like me), then be happy for as long as Winbox v3 works with ROS.
There will be a point that ROS will no longer support Winbox v3 forcing everyone to downgrade to v4, and then I'll probably be on the same boat as teslasystems. -2.

I don't care one bit about looks and native Linux/Mac support (v3 under wine works perfectly fine for me).
I only care about usability functionality and productivity. Anything that messes up my productivity workflow (which has developed over 21 years of muscle memory with winbox) is not welcome, no matter how "modern" or "fancy" it looks. In fact almost always modernity and looks get in the way of usability and productivity.
This is what happens when kids that have only known smartphone touchscreens enter the software development workforce and try to bring their bad habits developed on their smartphones, to decades old established desktop UI paradigms, destroying everything in their path.

Winbox 4 is still shit to me. Heavy, slow, terrible UI/UX design choices and colors, and in the end of the day, not a tool to do business, but a toy to configure home routers for enthusiasts that will log in a couple of times to their router every 6 months.
Tools are used every day for hours and hours on end. Toys are used for a few minutes.

So far Winbox 4 is a toy (ie some intern's experiment that happened to know a bit Qt), not a tool to do business every day, all day.

teslasystems · Sat Apr 19, 2025 10:25 pm

Sign under every word. But no one hears...

Amm0 · Sat Apr 19, 2025 11:36 pm

For the record, I still think WinBox4 is BETTER than WinBox3. I use WinBox4 daily without operational issues. The fact WinBox4 loads way faster than Wine+WinBox3 is more than enough to accept the small different vertical vs horizontal tabs, color schemes, etc.

I'll offer we DO use less Mikrotik than we used too... BUT that has nothing to do with WinBox4. So I'm more with the gist of @pe1chl commentary on RouterOS bugs. And generally
engineering resources could have been better utilized than on a "cross-platform winbox"

But the [slow-moving] ship sailed LONG AGO on that, so I doubt repeating same commentary is going to causes Mikrotik to return the drawing-board.
And I'd imagine the "open issues" in post 1 be a reasonable assumption what Mikrotik thinks a "final" WinBox4 might look like.

pe1chl · Sun Apr 20, 2025 12:03 pm

If you do this, you can see what libs being used and loaded.
Have removed the links in this list though.
Code: Select all
ldd WinBox | cut -f2 | cut -f1 -d' ' | sort
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
libbrotlicommon.so.1
libbrotlidec.so.1... etc

The issue with that is that many distributors name their packages differently from the actual library file names they contain.
So you still would need to convert those .so.1 names to package names, different for each distribution (yay linux!).

That being said, I encountered no issue when running WinBox 4 on two "certainly not maxed-out" Debian Xfce installs.
Apparently all of those libraries already were installed for different packages I have on the system.

One thing keeping me from using WinBox 4 on my work system is that it does not work on the Xtightvnc X server that I use there.
My work Linux machine runs on a VMware server and I connect to it using VNC. The install is bullseye, still did not get around to upgrading it to see if it is magically solved.

w0lt · Sun Apr 20, 2025 5:34 pm

I think for the price, v4 WinBox is great. Sure, it still needs a "lot" of work, but what ROS product doesn't.
But still, other than my time (which I guess, is still worth something), I don't have anything financially invested in it.
I do use the Mac version which I find fast (and much quicker than using Crossover), but still needs a lot of work.
I hope they make a few needed changes shortly, but I guess I can wait.
If they suddenly decide to put a price on it, then I probably would have something meaningful to say about it.
Till then, I just sigh, and plod on.. 😎

KiwiBloke · Mon Apr 21, 2025 12:55 am

I don't have anything financially invested in it... If they suddenly decide to put a price on it, then I probably would have something meaningful to say about it.

Um, every time you buy a MT product, you invest in it. That is the price they put on it. So perhaps this is the time to "have something meaningful to say about it"?

pe1chl · Mon Apr 21, 2025 10:29 pm

One thing keeping me from using WinBox 4 on my work system is that it does not work on the Xtightvnc X server that I use there.
My work Linux machine runs on a VMware server and I connect to it using VNC. The install is bullseye, still did not get around to upgrading it to see if it is magically solved.

Today I upgraded it to Debian bookworm and the issue is resolved, so now I can migrate to WinBox 4.

Paternot · Tue Apr 22, 2025 12:01 am

Today I upgraded it to Debian bookworm and the issue is resolved, so now I can migrate to WinBox 4.

What were You using? I had no issues with OpenSuse Leap 15.6

pe1chl · Tue Apr 22, 2025 10:57 am

Please read. The system was upgraded from Debian bullseye to Debian bookworm.
The issue was that on Xtightvnc the window of WinBox 4 could not be enlarged above a certain size.
As my desktop is 1600x1200 it would not allow to fullscreen the window, it looks like it crashed at about 1 megapixel.
(the error was "Warning: Ignoring window icon 1048578 exceeds maximum xcb request length 1048575 (:0, )")
I could not find a way to increase that maximum xcb request length but it looks like in bookworm it is higher.

Paternot · Tue Apr 22, 2025 12:57 pm

The issue was that on Xtightvnc the window of WinBox 4 could not be enlarged above a certain size.
As my desktop is 1600x1200 it would not allow to fullscreen the window, it looks like it crashed at about 1 megapixel.

Weird, I run dual screens at 1440p and didn't got this one. Yes, using X11 too: no Wayland here. More specifically, I'm using xorg-x11-server-21.1.11

wispmikrotik · Tue Apr 22, 2025 2:42 pm

The development of winbox 4 is going very slowly.

pe1chl · Tue Apr 22, 2025 7:41 pm

I'm using xorg-x11-server-21.1.11

Is it so difficult to read? The issue occurred with Xtightvnc. That is an X server that has no physical screen but can be connected using VNC. Kind of terminal server solution.
With the normal X11 server this issue did not occur. I presume there is some way to set the max xcb request length but I have not been able to find it, and likely the compiled-in default was too low and has been changed now.

infabo · Tue Apr 22, 2025 7:53 pm

I guess Mikrotik underestimated how much work it is to rewrite Winbox - especially when disrupting several workflows and dismissing/ignoring industry UI/UX standards.

patrikg · Tue Apr 22, 2025 8:55 pm

May I ask why using Xtightvnc is that because of using some game OS like Windows :), when you can use ssh with forward X11 ?
Maybe it can be solved with WSL2 in Windows ? I don't know.
I have heard that WSL2 have support for translating X11 to WinAPI.

I get it why using a server to secure with a bastion host.
And why not also secure the bastion with some hardware key like Yubikey.

optio · Tue Apr 22, 2025 9:03 pm

No need for WSL, Xming or X-Win32 (commercial) can do that.

patrikg · Tue Apr 22, 2025 9:17 pm

No need for WSL, Xming or X-Win32 (commercial) can do that.

My goal was with my answer was not to add more external programs to the stack.

pe1chl · Tue Apr 22, 2025 10:12 pm

May I ask why using Xtightvnc is that because of using some game OS like Windows :), when you can use ssh with forward X11 ?
Maybe it can be solved with WSL2 in Windows ? I don't know.
I have heard that WSL2 have support for translating X11 to WinAPI.

I use this because I can leave the Linux system powered 24h/day (on the server) and access it from my Windows workstation at work, or my home Linux system (via VPN), while all programs remain running. (on 20-desktop Xfce)
I used a solution that allows a similar virtual X server and then forwards the X11 protocol (I forgot the name), but it causes problems when you accidentally open something that has "nice visual effects" (e.g. in the browser) or otherwise causes a lot of screen updates.
With VNC the screen updates never go faster than the "poll rate", any other changes are discarded.
When forwarding X11 protocol, your session can get very much "behind" when there are lots of updates, and the system becomes unusable over a "slow" connection.

Paternot · Tue Apr 22, 2025 11:29 pm

Is it so difficult to read? The issue occurred with Xtightvnc. That is an X server that has no physical screen but can be connected using VNC. Kind of terminal server solution.
With the normal X11 server this issue did not occur. I presume there is some way to set the max xcb request length but I have not been able to find it, and likely the compiled-in default was too low and has been changed now.

Yes, yes, sorry. Misread. Hold your horses, will you?

Wed Apr 23, 2025 1:58 pm

What's new in 4.0beta19:

*) updated Files menu for future RouterOS versions
*) use specific file browse widget for file selection fields
*) try to restore table scroll position when possible
*) do not send dynamically hidden fields