"Novell's long journey from NetWare to Linux is finally complete. On Oct. 8, Novell released Open Enterprise Server 2 to its customers worldwide. Shortly after acquiring SUSE and its enterprise-focused Linux distribution, Novell announced that its follow-on to NetWare 6.5 would ship as a set of network services that could run atop the NetWare and the Linux kernel, OES 1.0. OES, which began shipping in April 2005, was the first major step in Novell moving NetWare's services from its native operating system to Linux. Now, with OES 2.0, the NetWare operating system kernel, NetWare 6.5 SP7, is still there if you run it, but it runs on top of the Xen hypervisor. You can also run the NetWare services, or a para-virtualized instance of NetWare, on top of Xen with the SLES 10 SP 1 kernel. So, if you're wedded to NetWare and its way of doing things, you don't have to wave good-bye to it."
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Member since:2005-07-06
What graphical tools are you talking about? What does Mono have to do with it? Is there a real benefit to open sourcing NetWare services, or more specifically NCP and eDirectory and dealing with having to remove third party code and encryption techniques(such as RSA bits)?
I'm not going to sit here and defend Novell's corporate culture. I have no experience to be able to. Nor am I going to defend their management decisions because I don't agree with all of them.
However, I don't see how all this directly impacts OES2 and specifically OES2 Linux and whether it is a solid performer in the server room. Apparently it's feature equal(or better) than OES2 NetWare.
I reserve judgment on the product for myself until I can actually find the time to install it and begin testing.
Edited 2007-10-10 12:49
Member since:2005-07-06
What graphical tools are you talking about?
Exactly my point. Equivalents that can go head-to-head against its biggest competitor - Windows 2003.
What does Mono have to do with it?
Because Mono is now supposedly their official development environment for producing such tools. I don't really see it helping them much to produce the aforementioned, and badly needed, tools.
Is there a real benefit to open sourcing NetWare services...
Novell are the ones trying to move to Linux. Their Netware customers didn't ask for it, because Netware did what it was good at - being a network and file sharing OS. They just wanted Netware to be made better. In moving to Linux, Novell really needed to convince their Netware customers that there were benefits to be had, and they needed to put a lot of work into making sure that what was good about Netware could be transferred as seamlessly as possible to their Linux replacement. If you are able to open source those then it helps in getting them integrated into a Linux environment, and it also allows more people to use and communicate with Netware, which is quite important considering how Netware usage has declined.
However, I don't see how all this directly impacts OES2 and specifically OES2 Linux and whether it is a solid performer in the server room.
It has everything to do with that with respect to its competition.
Apparently it's feature equal(or better) than OES2 NetWare.
That's yet another problem. There should not be a Netware and Linux version of OES. It should be one product. Arguably, SLES and OES shouldn't be two separate products either. There should be one, as we have with RHEL and Windows 2003 with minor variations.
Member since:
2005-07-06
For Novell to have a future, OES basically had to be an amazing competitor to the OS that is taking away Netware's market share - Windows 2003. Put simply, it's not. Keep in mind that the company who Novell is in bed with is producing the OS that has been destroying their market share for some time now. Novell should just have focused on making something good.
The graphical tools that should be available to go head-to-head with Windows 2003 are simply not there, and there has been an awful lot of crap thrown around as to which toolkit to use (Mono obviously isn't helping), better integration of existing Netware tools into the Linux distribution and open sourcing a lot of Netware tools and the OS to enable that integration to happen and get people using Netware stuff again. What they've done is produced something that people who have bought into Red Hat and Windows can't see anything compelling in, and they've completely disaffected their existing Netware customers. Well done Novell.
Novell's traditional culture hasn't helped, as we have seen with the takeovers of Ximian and Suse and the arguments about what to use and what not to use. A decision should have come from the top down, and it didn't. Just ask Chris Stone, John Vigeant of Xensource, Alan Nugent and a lot of other good people from Suse. A company doesn't lose people like that unless there's something seriously wrong.
It looks as though there's another round of layoffs going on at the moment, there's still lacklustre growth and revenue from any new business, and the knee-jerk reaction from Novell's executives have only speeded things up.