Linux Growth Doesn't Offset NetWare Decline 165
steveit_is writes to tell us CommentWire is reporting that the decline in NetWare and Open Enterprise sales is plummeting at a much faster rate than their SUSE Linux sales are growing. It seems that the transition is proving to be every bit as difficult as Novell execs originally suspected. From the article: "When Novell last week announced its financial results for the fiscal first quarter ended January 31, the said that growth in its SUSE Linux and related products was decent, but that sales of its NetWare and Open Enterprise Server--a variant of NetWare that uses Linux as the operating system kernel that was announced last year--declined by 11%."
Netcraft (Score:1, Insightful)
Troll? WTF? (Score:1, Insightful)
Novell was extremely popular at some point (the netware v3 days, mid 90s), then hordes of people started migrating to NT4 to never come back. v4 installs never were as common, and I've only seen a handful of v5 installs. The Netware days are over, big time. Just like OS/2 (which wasn't a bad OS at all at the time). Every freakin' thing Novell bought or touched since then somehow ended up being a failure in a way or another (if you think Sun missed the
Why make the comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why make the comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
I got started with networks with Novell Netware 2.12.
From there I moved to 3.12, 4.11.
3.12 was rock solid, the only problem was that it was not an application server, it only did file and print (and did it very well). Having PC's/Solaris/MAC/OS2/Mainframes able to access the same files/print jobs was huge.
During the 2.12 and 3.12 days Microsoft (Win 3.11) was making major inroads with applications which IMO killed Novell. Since Novell did not have a App server to counter it (no one was supporting apps at least on Novell). Novell was left with file and print jobs.
Installing shared apps on a Novell server could be a major nightmare.
When NDS came out it was too little too late.
I see no real reason to migrate to SUSE/Novell at this time
I have bought the 9.2/9.3 version of SUSE (need to buy 10) just to help support Novell.
Re:Why make the comparison (Score:3, Interesting)
THE BEST directory server out there is too little?
Re:Why make the comparison (Score:2)
More on topic, I admin a server farm of about 40 Netware 6.5 servers. Unless Novell stops supporting Netware, I really don't expect to migrate to Suse. What I would like to be able to do is migrate some of the Windows app servers to Suse (or Netware, whatever). Unfortunately, the apps are only supported on Windows, so that's what we have to run.
No
Re:Why make the comparison (Score:4, Interesting)
NDS, if anything, was too much too early.
While I can see advantages to directory services for a 1 person network, DS is very much influenced by the "network effect". The more you use it, the more valuable it is. The more objects it has, the more usefull it is. Its most usefull for large networks. WfW and later NT workstation and 95, with their built in p2p networking, was, in many cases "good enough". Even for networks that used, and liked, NW 3.11, but translated to "good enough" WfW/95, when they grew, grew into other MS products. Netware 4.x, with NDS, was a race to the top, with the bottom falling out compleatly.
Didn't Have An App Server?? (Score:2)
They were crushed by Microsoft. End of story. They should of ditched their proprietary Netware long ago - they even resisted supporting TCP/IP for the longest time! How forward thinking was that??
Re:Why make the comparison (Score:2)
(I've bought 9.2 and 10.0 retail.)
Re:Why make the comparison (Score:2)
Good. Maybe you guys can tell me why 9.2 seems to only work on my notebook?
After a long install on a PC it seemed to be working. Hit the net and got some sound. Shut down to attach a CD cable and that was it. Now it boots to the console and tells me to
"umount -n -r readwrite,rw
I login root and do it and ^D. Restart. Same. Try with safe boot menu option. Safe boot does an fsck and chkdsk or something. The same problem. Try a few more variations.
Pls don't tell me I have to reinstall
Re:Why make the comparison (Score:2)
Ask the same question at linuxquestions.org or on suseforums.net or on one of the mailing lists: http://en.opensuse.org/Communicate#Mailing_Lists
Also, I would highly recommend against using 9.2 these days. 10.0 has been out for awhile and is worlds better than 9.x in terms of speed, usage,
Re:Why make the comparison (Score:2)
The US Postal Service for reference.
Re:Why make the comparison (Score:2)
Dammit, no wonder our mail's been so slow!
(Ba-bump-pshh! Thanks folks, I'll be here all week!)
Re:Why make the comparison (Score:2)
If Novell would open their tech... (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead, they horde their tech, and don't even bother to advertise it much. I'm not really surprised they're failing with that strategy; it has Commodore written all over it.
Re:If Novell would open their tech... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a great observation. We're migrating off of NetWare because of the hassle of maintaining two directories(We also have ADS), amoung other reasons. We'd love to keep ZENWorks, but guess what? You still have to maintain two directories.
My converstations with supporters of this are almost commical.
ZENWorks Supporter (SUP): ZEN supports ADS!
ZENWorks Skeptic (Skep): Great! I don't have to support multiple directories!
SUP: Well, actually you do, but they sync, so you don't have extra maintenance!
Skep: Ok, so I get to do all my administration in ADS, right?
SUP: Well, no, you have to use Console One, but they're syncing so you don't have to worry about maintaining seperate user accounts!
Skep: So I don't have to worry about eDir logons, right?
SUP: well, you actually have to logon to eDir.
Skep: But it's clientless, right?
SUP: Absolutely! No netware client, you just have to logon to eDir through the ZENWorks client.
Skep: How is that clientless?
SUP: There's no NetWare client, so it's clientless.
Skep: Um.
Skep: I've had problems with maintaining two seperate accounts in the past. For example, password complexity, expiration, etc are all handled differently in the two directories and this has led to inconsistant password policy.
SUP: ZENworks has some great policy options!
Skep: Yes, I understand this, but how do I reconcile eDir's grace logons with ADSs warnings before expiration? This kind of seems like a hassle to me.
SUP: You don't need to worry, the directories are synced! The syncing is so good, you won't have any problems.
Skep: But I am having problems.
SUP: Those aren't really problems. You just don't understand.
Skep: I do understand, and I also don't want a client that replaces my Windows logon GINA.
SUP: The client is not a problem. You'll like it.
Skep: um.
If ZENWorks was fully integrated into ADS and had no seperate logon, we'd use it. ZEN is awesome. But as long as Novell and its supporters fail to see issues with the things that we think are issues, we're going to seek other options.
TW
Re:If Novell would open their tech... (Score:4, Interesting)
Product vs. Service (Score:2)
What were you expecting? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that they have been able to turn Linux into a business for them at all is a good thing.
Re:What were you expecting? (Score:2)
And where's the evidence of that? You're being a little premature, don't you think? No offense to Novell, but last I heard they bought somebody else's Linux business. Since acquiring Suse, they've seen its share of the Linux market shrink compared to Red Hat's. Meanwhile, their transitional product for past (and future) Netware customers, Open Enterprise Server, is critical to their success and yet is included
Re:What were you expecting? (Score:3, Interesting)
You have data to back that up? Everything I've seen in the mid to large corp field defies that, with a few SuSE rollouts I know of, at least in Europe and North America, and no new RH rollouts. The reason seems to be that the Novell brand is an easier sale for IT project managers, it's always Novell SuSE, never SuSE alone, and possibly cheaper support contracts? Don't get me wrong, RH still has more boxes out th
Re:What were you expecting? (Score:2)
Don't kill the cow 'til the calf is grown (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Don't kill the cow 'til the calf is grown (Score:5, Funny)
No Y2K bug that I saw. (Score:3, Informative)
I was consulting back in 1999-2000 and I never saw any Y2K problems with NetWare.
Re:No Y2K bug that I saw. (Score:2)
I remember because I had lots of jobs pre 2000 to patch a whole bunch of them for my customers.
Re:No Y2K bug that I saw. (Score:2)
Re:Don't kill the cow 'til the calf is grown (Score:3, Interesting)
I worked for a Banyan reseller back then. Most of our customer's had policies whereby everything needed to be compliant and in place by mid-1999, or even earlier. Banyan had got their OS up to date fairly quickly as they only had one point in the entire server OS that handled two digit years. However they also had a Windows E-mail client calle
Re:Don't kill the cow 'til the calf is grown (Score:2)
I'm confident in this as I did the Y2K testing of NetWare 3.12 and 4.x for a major entertainment conglomerate. We then used NetWare in the lab as we tested all of the other applications on the network. Other than the above mentioned, we had no issues.
My 4.12 serer is still running fine, thank you very much.
Novell History, for those that forgot. (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, Ray found that a small group was working on some interesting items and focused the company on it. Of course, they did lay off a large number of their staff. IIRC, they got down to something like 100 employees. But they came back in flying colors.
Novell will go through some leans times, but they learned to jump ship BEFORE it sank completely. It would have been better had they jumped earlier, but
Novell will be around in 10 years. I doubt that companies like symantic, nortin, intuit, and AOL will.
Re:Novell History, for those that forgot. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Novell History, for those that forgot. (Score:2)
We did a couple years ago due to stability & compatibility issues and the fact that they were starting to miss things! Unfortunately with Microsoft coming out with their own AV product Norton is square in their sights so it's only going to get worse. For a product as tightly integrated with the MS API as Norton is, that's the kiss of death.
(Thank goodness for AVG and Trend Micro!
Re:Novell History, for those that forgot. (Score:5, Informative)
Novell was not involved in mainframes.
It started out at the dawn of the 80s making microcomputer trinkets, and eventually became successful selling Netware - which it survives on to this day.
Re:Novell History, for those that forgot. (Score:1)
I also hear that Novell put a lot of work into Directory Access Protocol (DAP) for network management databases. DAP grew and grew and was too bulky to be popularly used. Somebody made up Lightweight Directory Access
Not quite. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem was that Novell did that back when most people were still on NetWare 3.12 or using a Windows domain model.
Admin'ing an NDS tree is more work and takes more expertise. Novell failed to sell people on the benefits of a directory service. LDAP is also a sub-set of the X.500 standard.
Active Directory can talk to LDAP, but it is not LDAP.
NDS can talk to LDAP, but it is not LDAP. Novell even has NLDAP (Novell LDAP) implemented as a server process.
The problems Novell had were:
#1. They made very solid products. There wasn't any reason for small shops to dump NetWare 3.12 and upgrade to 4.x or 5.x or 6.x now.
#2. They VIGOROUSLY defended their licensing revenue. A NetWare server would broadcast it's serial number and if it saw another server using it, it would kick all the users off of it. Meanwhile, anyone could install 1,000 NT servers with a single license number.
#3. Their servers sucked as application servers. But they rocked as file and print servers. But more and more apps were moving to the server.
#4. Novell tried to buy their way into a fight with Microsoft on the desktop with WordPerfect and such.
#5. Today, they are still back in the early 1990's.
5a. Patching GroupWise is more difficult than patching Win2K or
Debian.
5b. Patching NetWare 6.5 is more difficult
5c. Novell's sales force sucks ass at the small company level. They simply refuse to tell you how to buy their products and even what their products are.
5d. NWAdmin is needed for some admin tasks. Console1 is needed for others. NoRM is needed for yet others.
5e. In order to run some of the BASIC admin utilities, you have to correctly configure NetWare + Apache + Tomcat + Java + LDAP/NLDAP + their stupid Tomcat app + SSL (and I may have left out a sub-system or two). What fucking moron thought that THAT would be a good idea? And the fucking app doesn't even uninstall cleanly so if you do make a mistake, you have to look up how to remove all the little bits so you can re-install it.
5f. Great. You like webservers and such. But why the fuck does EVERY app have to be run via the web with its own fucking ports?
I can go on and on and on about this. Really. Novell has, today, managed to incorporate EVERY bad idea for the last 20 years from every vendor out there.
Seriously. Grab the latest service pack for NetWare 6.5 and make sure you read the install text. You'll have to dig down to a sub-directory to make sure you install 2 sub-items that are NOT automatically installed when you install the service pack but which are required.
Learn from Debian, Novell. Patching your system should be even EASIER than Windows Update.
Re:Not quite. (Score:2)
Very common misconception! LDAP is a protocol. LDAP says nothing of the backend storage mechanism. AD is an LDAP server. Anyone that tells you otherwise is sadly misinfomred. Anything that serves data via the LDAP protocol is a LDAP server.
Re:Not quite. (Score:3, Insightful)
Patching a Novell server is not trivial, topped only by GroupWise patching, which I look upon with dread. And God help you if you left out a package on install and now want to add it to a patched server.
Novell used to have an excellent administration model, where you went to a single progr
Netware, support hell (Score:2, Informative)
At $DAYJOB, We've had all kinds of trouble since 5.1. The problems are so signifigant that we've gladly paid Novell to send an engineer to look over the problem at $2,000 per day. To date, the suggestions have been... less than hoped for.
The main problem seems to be memory m
Re:Netware, support hell (Score:2, Informative)
an older version of Netware. I've run large scale Netware 5.5 and 6.0 operations
with 30k+ workstations without needing help from Novel or having "memory
management" issues.
NetAdmin has always made MS AD look like the short bus stepson of the networking
industry. I just can't take anyone serious that says they are looking at MS
products after taking the time to work with and *learn* any of the Unix platforms.
I am actively moving to
Re:Netware, support hell (Score:2)
oh yea and if they mention switching to windows stab them in the throat with a rusty spoon
Re:Netware, support hell (Score:2)
IMO the thing that killed Novell was a combination of two things. F
Re:Netware, support hell (Score:2)
Re:Netware, support hell (Score:2)
eDirector
Why choose SuSE? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have tried SuSE, it was nice, polished interface but it just didn't stand out. Now I am addicted to Ubuntu, it is simple, it does what I want and nothing more, kind of like crack cocaine...
Re:Why choose SuSE? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why choose SuSE? (Score:2)
Re:Why choose SuSE? (Score:2)
"Just use KDE." --Some famous geek-person.
Re:Why choose SuSE? (Score:2)
Ubuntu may be good and easy to maintain, but who can you blame if it blows up in your face.
No manager will want to take that responsiblity.
Re:Why choose SuSE? (Score:2)
Re:Why choose SuSE? (Score:2)
Re:Why choose SuSE? (Score:2)
SuSE and Novell (Score:1)
I also never see advertising for *anything* Novell anymore. Humm.
Ah, Netware... (Score:4, Interesting)
Good times.
It seems that, more than any other OS, Netware is something whose time has clearly passed; everything Netware provided is now available on the user's desktop, regardless of what it boots to. If I remember correctly, NW has been expanded to also be an application server platform for databases, web servers (I believe Apache can run on it), but it seems that it's a more radical configuration than the most offbeat Unix platform. A friend of mine described programming NLMs as nothing like he'd ever done, and nothing he'd ever like to do again.
No wonder when Novell doesn't ... (Score:4, Interesting)
No I don't mean to sponsor GnuCash, I mean to build up a cross-platform solution which is able to compete against Quickbooks on all platform (including Windows). I guess it doesn't need more that just a few developers to create an alternative within halve a year and within a year Quickbooks will notice its business diminish. Well lets see then how all the others Windows-Only vendors will react when they see what happened to Quickbooks.
I'm quite sure these few developers have a much more important impact on the success of Linux that dropping another fifty developers into Suse. It will even be better for Suse if these few developers are taken temporarily away from it.
The way to success is quite easy when you follow a few rules:
- don't have unsolvable obstacles
- don't have killer arguments against you
- don't have inhibitors
- do have something valuable the others don't have
- look at our products with the eyes of your customers or users
-
O. Wyss
Re:No wonder when Novell doesn't ... (Score:2)
Re:No wonder when Novell doesn't ... (Score:2)
If Novell were to put significant development resources behind GnuCash, it certainly could be runnable and usable and competitive on Linux, OSX, and Windows. Why start from scratch?
Pricing is everything (tech better be good, too) (Score:2)
No matter which way you cut it, I'm going to have to put in a boatload of time refactoring a painted-in-the-corner directory model with about 1400 users and 500 devices in this K12 school district. Add to that t
Re:Pricing is everything (tech better be good, too (Score:2)
We did a comparison about a year and a half ago, and the MS licenses (for comparable Novell services) were cheaper - but not by much. It was something like a nine year return on investment (which your finance person would tell you is not worth it).
Of course, what you really want is what the directory gets you: if all you need is login name + password, then it doesn't make sense to pay a lot per seat. If you need more, then it may be worth the
Re:TCO is everything (tech's not important) (Score:2, Funny)
Ten bucks, forty bucks who cares?... c'mon! Clearly you only want to look at TCO, and I have several reports handy here
TCO!
TCO!
...now go buy some Windows servers! Quick!
Re:TCO is everything (tech's not important) (Score:2)
Re:Pricing is everything (tech better be good, too (Score:2)
That's absolutely false! The quote my company recently received was around $10,000+ for starters. That's a far cry from "zilch"! Given the size of the company it was to support, that price will place it as the most expensive option, on a per user basis! Your definition of "zilch" must be different from everyone else's.
Re:Pricing is everything (tech better be good, too (Score:2)
Re:Pricing is everything (tech better be good, too (Score:2)
Correction (Score:2)
Re:Pricing is everything (tech better be good, too (Score:2)
*breaks cluebat* Next time, hit yourself a couple dozen times with it when you get the bright idea to use it.
Re:Pricing is everything (tech better be good, too (Score:2)
Either which way, downloading and using for free is a long way away from five digits of USD. Sorry, your cluebat remains pristine.
Cheers.
Re:Pricing is everything (tech better be good, too (Score:2)
Ximian leadership a huge liability (Score:2, Insightful)
SuSE was an amazing product and one of the best examples of a fully integrated GUI experience for Linux, where you didn't have to use the command
Re:Ximian leadership a huge liability (Score:2)
Re:Ximian leadership a huge liability (Score:2)
Maybe others "like" it then. I submit that it's basically a non-app. I know of no one using it seriously. Yet, we're constantly told of how great its GOING to be. Usually, by Miguel himself.
Apples and Oranges.... (Score:5, Insightful)
NetWare vs. Linux:
Okay - I've beat up the Linux/NetWare differences enough, but what about the business differences, and their impact on earnings?
Re:Apples and Oranges.... (Score:2)
Believe me I'm talking from painful experience here....
Re:Apples and Oranges.... (Score:2)
Right. And that's exactly why I think Novells path with Linux is the right one -- because meddling with Microsoft will kill you, and it nearly killed Novell.
You may offer (print- and fileserver) solutions for Windows-clients for years, but in the end, Microsoft will offer those itself, and then you've lost. The same applies just about to anything. Either your company gets killed, or bought by Microsoft. There is no future in the Microsoft-mark
Re:Apples and Oranges.... (Score:2)
It wasn't based on DOS! It used DOS as a bootloader. There was a security option to unload DOS when you started netware.
Re:Apples and Oranges.... (Score:3, Informative)
<sigh>
NetWare uses DOS as a bootstrap. Period. The engineers at Novell who developed the loader mechanism back in the NetWare 3 days (NetWare 2.15 didn't use DOS as a bootstrap, though you could run non-dedicated mode and have a second "session" that ran DOS so the machine could be used as a workstation as well) decided that since DOS already gets a system started up, there was no need to reinvent the wheel.
SERVER.EXE loads from DO
I wouldn't count out Novell (Score:2, Interesting)
Swiss Government [eweek.com]
Novell is leading linux in china [softpedia.com]
I mean come on I don't think the Swiss Gov't is going to pick a company that doesn't know what they are doing.
Redhat is a great example of how a linux company can be successful. Novell is backed by IBM, and has partnerships all over the place like Redhat. I think Novell is going to surprise a lot of people.
Hey even their old CEO is now the CEO of Google. [google.com] They have too many ties to too many power players f
Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Dan.
Remember - Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
IBM and Novell (Score:2, Interesting)
IBM is buying a lot from Novell, and not from redhat.
For example. Novell has this tiny distributions for Point Of Sale Hardware, called Novell SuSe Linux Point of Sal NSLPOS or NLSpos, it depends how you order the words.
IBM has a HUGE hardware POS, and they build IRES, IBM Retail Enterprise Solution on TOP of Novell`s NLSPOS
Also, Novell has support for the brand new OpenPower, Xseries and so on, also redhat, but the difference, is that, Redhat charges you by instance, and Novell
Re:IBM and Novell (Score:4, Insightful)
You're joking, right? This statement alone disqualifies whatever else you have to say, because it's obvious YOU HAVE NO CLUE. Red Hat and IBM have a close partnership. IBM constantly plays it up whenever they come with the sales pitches. You can get RHEL on practically anything IBM sells. You're going to have to quantify your statement with hard facts before anyone believes it. You can do that, right?
Note that I'm not arguing IBM doesn't have a close relationship with SuSE (Novell, now), too.
"So I really think that Novell will survive and will have a huge market, more market than RedHat, they are not so cocky about them self as RedHat, Novell wants money, not fame..."
That's a laughable assertion. You don't think there are huge egos at Novell? The reason you keep hearing about Red Hat on Slashdot is that they're continually giving to the community. Aiglx, GFS, scheduler enhancements, gcc development, etc. - if Red Hat gets fame and ego boosts like that, they're A-OK in my book. The folks at Novell are starting to realize this - which is why you're seeing them open-source more and more stuff, and backpedal somewhat on their "hybrid open-source proprietary" philosophy they were pitching shortly after the merger (it didn't win them many friends).[1]
You obviously have some rather pre-conceived notions about Red Hat and Novell. Sorry if the facts get in the way.
I think SuSE is a fine distro, but Novell is flailing about to a large extent with regards to how to evolve itself. They'll probably survive, but it's going to be painful.
-Erwos
[1] I received several sales pitches from them.
They lack vison (Score:2, Insightful)
I was a big fun of suse, and I now use opensuse, but the messages that novell sends are confusing. Whitch is the main desktop platform kde, gnome or both?
They have switched the engine of yast (dependencies resolver) to the engine of
redcarpet in beta 5 of opensuse 10.1. I think that there are other examples....
And they have problem in working with community see Xgl vs Xegl or AppArmor vs SeLinux, I haven't the technical skill to d
Give them Groupwise! (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides, Novell's immediate problem is not getting Suse out there to it's customers. It's coming, we know it, and even if we don't like it we're going to move there eventually. Novell's big problem is losing current Netware/GW customers, and attracting new ones.
Open source Groupwise. It seems so obvious to me I can't believe Novell isn't doing this, they're pretty much in the process of abandoning GW anyway. Linux is desperate for a full-featured, one-stop Groupware product. How many Suse servers would you sell if open source GW was out there? How many current Netware customers would you save from switching over to Exchange?
Re:Give them Groupwise! (Score:2)
Hula's actually an Open Source Netmail, but they're going to be porting major new features from Groupwise to Hula.
Re:Give them Groupwise! (Score:2)
Really it ju
Re:Give them Groupwise! (Score:2)
I absolutely agree! It drives me crazy that all of these "groupware packages on Linux" comparisons (i.e. like in eWeek) never include Groupwise. The only explanation for this blatant ommission is that the product is not being pushed like it deserves to be. To my knowledge, there is *nothing* that stands up to Exchange like this product. Users can continue to use Outlook if they
Frightening (Score:3, Interesting)
Put it another way, a couple of years into their Linux story, Novell is turning over around $1 billion of which pure Linux contributes around $50 m, and much of the rest is declining legacy stuff. This is a drop in the ocean, and all the harder when Red Hat appear to be creaming Novell at the sharp end.
$50 m compared to $1 billion. I don't know how Novell is going to get out of this one, but talking about changes to SuSE or Ximian or yet more sugar-daddy spending on open source projects is like the Titanic and deckchairs. It's very hard to see Novell avoiding a break up.
Re:Frightening Numbers wrong (Score:2)
training, poor compatibility, and instability (Score:2, Interesting)
But here's my take on it. Maybe somebody at Novell will read this. The admins seem to be afraid to learn UNIX... So I am assuming that Novell charges for the training, the testing, etc. Now our admins, they get Winders but they really don't get Linux or UNIX. I think it would have been in Novell's best interest to eat the cost for training, especially to those who have already gotten their CNA or CNE in older N
How Novell can Succeed (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Give away Zen, or at least parts of it.
Many of the features in Zenworks come part and parcel with active directory. There could be a Zen-lite that does the same things that AD admins can do through group policy. Include the ability to do similar tasks on Linux machines and Novell can go back from "keeping up with Microsoft" to "staying a step ahead of Microsoft". While they're at it, Novell needs to work include support for every aspect of Firefox, including a list of supported plugins and extensions, to amke it manageable through Zen. AD admins can mange the IE settings across their network with GRoup Policy, Linux admins need to be able to do the same thing.
2. Do the same thing with Red Carpet.
Novell either needs to give Red Carpet away or have a limited version that operates the same way SUS does. They could have a professional version that will also use a push architecture in addition to a pull architecture. Personally, I loved Red Carpet when I first heard of it. Patch management for my windows machines and my Linux machines? Score. Here's the problem: I can get patch management on all my windows machines gratis with SUS / WSUS. I've got less than 20 Linux servers in my environment, about 200 windows servers, and around 3500 windows workstations. How could I possibly justify $18 per seat for Red Carpet when I can run SUS for free and just have our admins manually patch the Linux Servers? Yes I know Microsoft is the source of the vulnerabilities in the first place, yes I know Novell shouldn't have to give away a product that cleans up Microsoft's mess for free. Y'know what though, money talks. By having to pay extra cash for Linux patch management, that adds to the TCO of Linux while Windows' TCO stays the same, giving Microsoft marketing more ammo to work with.
3. Improve the Yast firewall interface and add remote management via Zen.
For that matter, everytinhg you can do in Yast needs to be accessible remotely via Zen. In an AD environment I can manage the Windows firewall on all the machines in my domain via Group Policy. I need to be able to do the same thing in a Linux environment. And the Yast firewall interface is the only one I've seen that actually sucks worse than the Windows firewall interface.
4. Ratchet up support for Wine. Partner with Codeweavers, or acquire them.
Novell's Linux support needs to embrace Wine or another emulator to assist with Linux migrations. Their current approach of "Run a Terminal Server that hosts the Windows-only application" isn't going to cut it. Users want icons on desktops that run their applications. Clicking an item on the linux desktop, then logging into a termserver, then clicking an icon on the termserver, then logging into an app, isn't going to fly. If Novell really wants to be successful in migrating companies to Linux, they should partner with or acquire one of the Windows emulation projects, and offer "take your POS custom app that you bought from a vendor or coded in house and make it work on Linux" as a service with a one time fee and optional support.
I think what Novell's trying to do is great, but I see them hanging themselves with it if they don't stay a step ahead of their competition.
Re:Linux = failure (Score:1)
Re:The real problem (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The real problem (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The real problem (Score:2)
FYI, in the Windows world all servers except domain contollers have a sperate "root" account on each server. You can use your domain credentials for all member servers, but you still must maintain a seperat Administrator account on each server.
This is not
Re:The real problem (Score:2)
If you're in it for the money, you can probably better move elsewhere and get some Linux certification (maybe from Novell).
Re:netware is no good (Score:2)
Re:netware is no good (Score:2)
AD is *somewhat* a rip-off of NDS - in that NDS predated Active Directory, and in fact it's what Microsoft itself has compared Active Directory to. Neither are proprietary implementations of the same open protocol, they're proprietary implementations of open standards.
eDirectory is based on the IETF X.500 directory model. No vendor implements all of X.500, but many of the ideas from X.500 find their ways into almost every directory server on the market.
Re:netware is no good (Score:2)
Simply put, I do not come
Re:netware is no good (Score:2)
My bad - please accept my apologies.
Re:Stupid GNOME / Ximian crap (Score:2)
Novell got Evolution, the email and calendaring app, along with the other Ximian technologies. Now Evolution is compatible with Exchange servers, and almost as goog as Outlook... and there is a Win32 port on the go.
Exchange and Outlook are key components for Microsoft, there are lots of places were they're the only reason to keep Windows Servers. If Novell offer an equal, or better replacement, it will be a cash cow almost as goog as Netware was.
IMHO thats an important piece of software that Op
Re:Stupid GNOME / Ximian crap (Score:2)