Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 20th Mar 2008 21:43 UTC
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RE[5]: Nothing of Consequence
by sbergman27 on Fri 21st Mar 2008 22:33
in reply to "RE[4]: Nothing of Consequence"
But really, who cares? Linux is an alternative to Windows, not a replacement.
I agree with respect to their customer conversions. I disagree with respect to their own internal use. I am a huge believer in eating one's own dog food. I don't put my clients on something unless I am willing to use it myself. I remain 100% Unix/Linux on my own machines, and those I control at our office. In that way, I give myself incentive to be the best implementor I can be. Hard problems, that would not be worth the consulting time to resolve on the spot, I already have an answer for because I've already dealt with it on my own time.
Microsoft goes to great lengths to make sure that their products are the easiest short-term solution, even if they aren't the best solution, overall. The only defense against that is to be willing to go the extra mile to be sure that the best solution is also the best short-term solution in the eyes of the client. Sometimes that task exceeds my ability and is not possible. And that is when I have to grin, bear it, and do the right thing, distasteful as it might be.
Novell owes as much to their clients.
That said, the latest hard figures that I have regarding Novell's migration are from 2004, and I found them disappointing at the time. But that was 3-4 years ago, and things may be better now.




Member since:
2005-07-13
FWIW, I had a buddy that worked in sales at Novell a while back, and they were equipped with dual-boot NLD9/XP laptops. They were using NLD, but had to resort to XP because some of the legacy business applications they used internally required Excel spreadsheets with heavily laden macros. It was basically required for some of the reporting they had to do, but at that time he said they were working on migrating that bit, which could also explain the development effort Novell put into macro-compatibility for OOo2.
At any rate, he indicated that the majority of employees were running linux, though that was desktop, I have no idea about their server mix.
I would expect they've made strides since then. But really, who cares? Linux is an alternative to Windows, not a replacement. It will work well in some scenarios, but not in all. Any business revolving around commercial linux needs to accept that if they have a hope of succeeding. Better that Novell should face the same issues their customers will face when trying to migrate, rather than pretending they don't exist.