Novell will be the “catalyst” for desktop and enterprise Linux, according to its chairman and chief executive Jack Messman. VNUnet and TheRegister report. Should Red Hat start to worry?
Novell Eyes Role of Linux Champion
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Eugenia Loli
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Linux and all the UNIX related stuff will find it’s way onto the Desktop without Novell too.
UNIX – After over 30 Years of server tradition now coming to your desktop!
…No. This is just another in a string of announcements over the past several years from a suit at Novell about how their firm is going to bring about major changes to the world of networking — announcements that never seem to bear fruit.
Novell is kind of too late for linux but it is good to see they are joining the bandwagon like SUN. Novell’s commitment to linux will make the platform even stronger.
Novell is not just any other business. It has a track record of technical excellence. It has been innovative and brought us directories in the LAN world.
Novell was already moving towards Linux and by acquiring Ximian it gains potential for tracktion on the desktop (Gnome) and keeping contact with its Microsoft market (Mono).
Should Red Hat worry? Why, the market is big enough for the both of them. The market may become big and it is not from Red Hat that Novell will steal marketshare.
Thanks,
Gerard
No, RH shouldn’t be worried but they shouldn’t take it sitting down either.
Novell has a long history of nicely thought out and executed products. Netware is still a better NOS, IMHO, than anything out of Seatle, but they didn’t market their wares properly.
If Novell were to apply their know-how and their design abilities properly, they could put out a really, really, good version of Linux for the server environment complete with common Netware services. RH should take note and apply its resources accordingly.
It all depends on how well Novell executes. They definitely have to tools to make a very nice networked environment with Linux and their NetWare tools. If they execute well from both a technical and marketing perspective, they could become serious competition for RedHat. Given their mixed success in other areas, I wouldn’t be too worried about RedHat just yet.
I agree. Novell flopped so many times comments like this just aren’t funny anymore. I’ll believe it when I see it. *yawn*
… Novell will be using Gnome as default… not very promising for a real rival of WinXP/2k…
That is questionable. Gnome can look pretty good and I myself prefer it over KDE, hands down.
It’s all a matter of taste and Novell just has a different one than you. ;>
Novell has delivered EXCELLENT products, but suffered from poor marketing. Some of their products, e.g. NDS, are superior to anything seen in the Microsoft world or even the Linux world. Novell marrying Linux is a plus for both arenas. There’s plenty of room for Red Hat AND Novell in the Linux world, but Red Hat has got to realize that Novell has the credibility, money, and power to deliver an end to end solution, with awesome support(!), and that they probably are going to target the same companies.
Should Red Hat worry? Hell yeah. But not THAT much.
Actually, this is bad news for Red Hat since that means that Novell is going hardcore after shops wanting to use Gtk-based clients and servers. This, of course, happens to be RH’s No. 1 pursuit right now.
I imagine that Novell may partner up with United Linux because of the standardization and because SuSE can help it with Qt/KDE stuff. Neither Qt nor Gtk will go away anytime soon.
methinks Novell likes teh taste of money
Linux with all of the NetWare stuff grafted onto it should be an interesting beast to work with.
Yet another company is going to claim to be “the one” to bring Linux to the desktop at home and business? Right…
I used to work at Novell, and they have a lot of talented programmers and a bunch of really cool products; like iPrint, iFolder, NDS, etc. (of course, they also have retarded products like ConsoleOne.)
I think it is good that Novell is finally moving their products to a more marketable platform.
I agree. While KDE is a nice DE, it just isn’t appealing to me. Gnome is very easy to use and looks very nice, in my opinion. I’m sure Novell will make their own customizations to it too. I’m interested to see what they come up with.
KDE is much nicer than Gnome, much more usable. And most of all, it crashed much less than KDE did.
But to be honset, the WM that crashed the least, actually not even once, is Solaris CDE! Yep, that old horse has something going for it, after all.
Both are memory pigs. What would Novell on Linux need that would require either of those hogs? We are talking about a file and print server for mostly windows networks afterall.
Yes, that’s another point, but I was talking on a related note, not Novell in particular.