Novell Still Runs Windows 191
daria42 writes "Despite Novell's internal migration to Suse and OpenOffice.org, the company admitted today that up to 3000 of its 5000 workers still had dual-boot installations with Microsoft Windows. These users are likely to be migrated to pure Linux boot systems in the next year or so." From the article: "Hovsepian's remarks indicate Novell will have at most a few months' experience as a complete Linux and open source desktop shop behind it when, according to the vendor's predictions, the software starts taking off in the mainstream." Update: 04/11 13:25 GMT by J : At the closing OSCON session, August 5, 2005, Miguel de Icaza talked about Novell's progress. My notes read: "novell's moving 5500 employees from windows to linux. first stage, office->openoffice, is complete. second stage, windows->linux, is 50% complete, proj. 80% by Nov."
Still develops products for windows (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not to be dense or anything (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I call bull (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Windows - Necessary Evil? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Zenworks or what? (Score:2, Insightful)
I call meta (Score:5, Insightful)
If Linux isn't ready for the desktop, there's no such thing as "ready for the desktop". I see absolutely NO criteria of "desktop readiness" that (a)applies to Windows, (b) doesn't apply to Linux and (c) is an attribute solely of the operating system.
Where Linux adopters run into trouble is C. The problem is what economists call "network effects": if you need software X, and provider of X only targets Windows, then you need Windows.
The point of a company like Novell migrating to Linux is to help create a Linux market for X, or its competitor X'. But until X or X' is available on Linux, then you're stuck with dual boot.
Re:Windows - Necessary Evil? (Score:5, Insightful)
Other Novell support staff needs Windows boxes around to support customers.
I don't think it's possible for them to be 100% Windows free. Their business demands that they run some Windows boxes.
What is "desktop ready"? (Score:5, Insightful)
So I consider Linux is already "desktop ready" for me. I think that for the most part, regular people can do just fine if Ubuntu or another user-friendly distro is completely setup for them and they are given maybe a 30-minute tutorial on how to access the web, e-mail, etc. So who are we talking about here? Who does Linux have to be "ready" for to be called desktop ready? Those idiots that call in to tech support asking which key is the any key? The elderly who don't even know what a mouse is? Or just your normal, average computer user? And if so, who is a normal, aveage computer user anyway?
Sorry for the early morning rant, but this term has been bothering me for quite some time.
No obstacles, only opportunities. (Score:5, Insightful)
But here's the deal... for all of its slowness, awkward GUI implementation, dubious reliability and stratospheric license and support contracts, all it really does is read and update database records. It's a LAMP application with out the L, A or P.
Here's a bigger deal... almost all vertical client/server apps can be replaced by a web-based application. Almost all of them do nothing but update and display database records.
Why not just hire a full-time RoR geek or two to crank out LAMP applications that will be robust, secure, customizeable to meet coprorate standards, easy to deploy and dirt cheap compared to a multi-zillion dollar per-seat license?
Why not indeed.
This is where the new growth in the IT industry is headed. Already, most of the tools I need to interact with the vast and varied store of corporate data are web-based utilities. Admittedly, I work on the technical side of a major ISP, and we tend to be more elightened about such things, but really... Linux on the desktop will be a reality sooner rather than later.
The trick isn't porting applications to the Linux desktop, but to the Linux server.
Re:Windows - Necessary Evil? (Score:2, Insightful)
The training myth (Score:2, Insightful)
My parents (age 70+) are happily running Fedora Core 5. training was neglible. They e-mail, surf, and play games with no problems at all.
My present company is completely linux-based using thin-clients. Training issues? None, nada. Complaints? None, nada. No issues teaching people to use Linux, no issues teaching people to use OpenOffice.org, or Gaim, or Evolution, or any of the other applications we use.
We are a medical facility. Our staff are trained to treat patients and are by no means computer people. They just want the computer to work so that they can get their jobs done. And you know what? That's exactly what it does.
Linux is not perfect, but neither is Windows. Each is better at some things than the other. Your comments are simply ignorant.
It's not like they haven't already paid for it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking as someone who lost a number of potentially productive days trying to get Windows 2000 SP4-slipstreamed to install on a 250G harddrive without crapping out at boot-time when it saw a partition beyond the 128GB barrier, Linux is looking better every day. In fact, after spending five minutes in Fedora, Ubuntu, and SuSE, the chameleon won and is now installed on my hda4. But I still need Windows to run a few things...yes, mostly games, and a few college websites that just have to have IE6. But I already own Win2K, and I'd be silly not to use it just because MS is an idiot sometimes.
Keeping Windows around for the things Windows is good at makes my computer more powerful. I don't support MS, but I'm not going to rend my nose to spite Bill's face.
Windows, or at least, the Microsoft Operating System, is never going to go away. If Linux seriously erodes Microsoft's position, they'll sink their pentillions of dollars into making a solid, quality, viable OS product. So don't mind Novell, or myself, for installing SuSE and Windows next to each other. You need not be a zealot or a martyr to be a soldier.
Re:Obvious? (Score:4, Insightful)
Since a fair wodge of Novell's money comes from selling Windows software, I comfortably predict that this won't happen any time soon.
Since Novell has a fair wodge of business savvy, I agree. The Windows licenses are sunk costs and removing Windows completely would only add more cost to that, with no measurable benefit. So long as the Windows partitions don't get in the way of doing work, it would be a bad business decision to get rid of them.
TFA is pure FUD. It might be useful to know how many Novell employees still mostly use Windows, but there is no value in knowing how many have dual boot capability.
Oh wait... a lot of businesses making the switch to Linux will be dual booting for some time. Looks like Novell is well positioned to provide them with experienced technical support. I wonder if that is accidental or deliberate <sg>?
Re:Windows - Necessary Evil? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is only another proof that successful companies don't waste money on removing facilities that are no longer useful but don't get in the way.
An emerging migration strategy from Windows to Linux is
Oh wait... you know that. You're only trolling, right?
[too early-- need more coffee...]
Re:Windows - Necessary Evil? (Score:4, Insightful)
AutoCAD - yup, very mysterious this...
StruCAD / XSteel - not quite so well known pretty much the only choices for 3D detailing in this industry.
On top of that we've got our CAD/CAM control software, can't see us moving to a Linux version of that. You need dedicated software to run well over £600,000 worth of machinery, taking data from the above packages. Can't see that running on anything but Windows for the forseeable future.
Novell Still Doesn't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
First to dispense with TFA: since they are developing stuff for Windows, they will never be rid of it, nor should they. So they will always run Windows in-house to some extent.
But why can't they sell their product to other people? They have all the right parts to replace a Windows/Active Directory infrustructure. They have a desktop (Suse), they have a respected directory server (eDirecotry/NDS), they have general purpose servers (Suse), Zenworks to mananage it all, and they have an entrenched legacy product (i.e. a foot in the door) for which they can provide an upgrade path. Most importantly, they have them integrated seemlessly in their Open Enterprise Server. But they still can't get the sale. Its because their pricing provides no advantage over Microsoft A Novell Open Enterprise Server per user license per year is $230 retail. A MS Win2K3 10 user CAL is $1199 retail (or $119.9 per user). That's retail. MS, being the bigger company, has the ability to come even lower in enterprise or site licensing. Sadly, Novell doesn't seem able to do the math.
They should take the chance that they could make up the difference in revenue by going with volume over price. More licneses for less each, instead of fewer licenses for more each. They have to realize that every Windows installation is going to lead to an Exchange installation instead of a Groupwise installation. If they could build the market share in the network products, the revenue in services and add-on products will follow.
Dual-boot means nothing in and of itself (Score:3, Insightful)
Having said that, the transition at Novell had its high and low points. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly the services on the company intranet shifted from supporting WIndows/IE only to generic browsers. I was disappointed in the quality of the GroupWise client on Linux (not that I was wild about the Windows version...), and the lukewarm support for the Evolution client on the GroupWise servers.
Oddly, the thing that made the Linux move easier for me than many of my co-workers was the fact that I am an OS X user by preference. Of course, the terminal was not a mystery, and I was more accustomed to accepting that similar things are sometimes managed very differently on different platforms.
One constructive criticism I would leave Novell with is that they could learn a lot from Apple about making *nix palatable to the desktop user (specific example: printing), but, from where I sat, it seemed as though Apple was completely invisible to Novell.
Re:I call meta (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, see, as of a month ago, I still had to hand edit a text file to get wireless working on my laptop. That gets filed under "not ready for the desktop". While it may seem simple to you to type 'apt-get update' and 'apt-get upgrade' you have to keep in mind that *average* users don't ever want to see a command prompt. You're also correct about (c). You can't get Quicken for Linux, and GnuCash doesn't magically talk to my bank for me.