According to my son who is a Novell expert,, Linux gives them the
application server robustness and flexibility that they now lack and
since printing is becoming all tcp/ip, they can take advantage of that
characteristic of Linux that is apparently not robust in Novell. I am
not a Novell person and can only repeat what he says about it. He is
pleased with the purchase for reasons already mentioned.
Michael C. Rock
Systems Analyst
Registered Linux User # 287973
"The time has come the walrus said to speak of many things,,"
"Christians give up what they cannot keep to gain what they cannot lose"
-----Original Message-----
From: slug@nks.net [mailto:slug@nks.net] On Behalf Of Paul M Foster
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 1:06 AM
To: slug@nks.net
Subject: Re: [SLUG] Novell, Linux and SuSE
On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 09:07:36PM -0500, Derek Glidden wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-11-04 at 18:48, Paul M Foster wrote:
>
> > My question is, why run Netware on top of Linux? Why would I need
> > Netware when I have Linux? Can't I build a server-based network out
of
> > readily available Linux-based programs? And if so, what would I want
> > Netware for?
>
> To support the (tens of?) thousands of sites, making up at least
> hundreds of thousands of computers, if not millions, that are still
> dependent on Netware.
That's kind of what I meant by "fanatical" Novell users. But if you're
not using Netware in the first place, it seems to me that you could just
run Linux and get a similar result. I guess what I'm getting at here is,
"What is so special about Netware that Linux doesn't also provide, but
for less money?"
<snip>
> Being able to run Netware on top of linux would be a great boon to
these
> companies as they would be able to a) more cheaply support and extend
> their existing Netware requirements, and b) more cheaply and easily
> migrate off of Netware into Linux-based Samba networks, and probably
> other freely-available technologies to replace the Novell junk they're
> using now.
We ran Netware at two places I've worked. This was from the DOS days
into the beginning of Windows 95. Novell was incredibly stable and very
efficient. It was also incredibly expensive, and a pain to administer,
requiring expensive Novell training. It had manuals stretching around
the block, and you couldn't mess with a Novell-formatted hard drive at
all. Getting Windows drivers for Netware (ones that worked) was a pain
(I'm sure Microsoft's intention).
What Netware did was allow you to set up a file server; create, change
and destroy users; attach network printers; and other things like that.
All of which I can now do _without_ Netware on a Linux box, and a little
hands on experimentation (and generous assistance from lists like this
one).
So either there are things I don't understand about Netware, or it
really doesn't have much intrinsic value, except to those who are
already locked into it.
Your comment about "Novell junk" seems to reinforce the idea that there
isn't actually much outright need for Netware.
>
> If they're not running on Netware directly, at the very least maybe
> Novell can get them to run on SuSE and still get some revenue. Better
a
> piece of a smaller pie than watching the whole pie triple in size and
> all go to Microsoft.
>
I wonder about this. Novell's been diversifying their offerings for the
last few years, without any upward change in their market share. Linux
stole the market out from under SCO, and is doing the same for SGI. And
I rather suspect the same will be true for Novell. And so I wonder if
maybe they have enough sense to recognize this, and are co-opting part
of the Linux market (by buying SuSE) before Linux completely obviates
their existence. I wonder if they believe that when Novell slowly fades
away, they can still get money by providing Linux support to former
Novell customers (satisfying the suits). Also, from what I understand,
much of SuSE's money comes from consulting services, which funds will
now flow to Novell.
Paul
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