Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (4498 mails)

[Kai Ponte <kai@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday 01 November 2006 14:24, Sandy Drobic wrote:
> Kai Ponte wrote:
> > Either install workgroup servers with NT and have the Windows
> > 3.x/95/WFW/NTWS and OS/2 clients auto-connect or be required to install
> > the very expensive (by comparison) Novell 4.x Server product and then
> > spend time at each workstation configuring a client software. Keep in
> > mind, that most companies had a mix of 386, 486 and Pentium workstations
> > - with many different NICs. It was just less headache to simply go with
> > the default NetBIOS client that shipped with WFW, 95, NTWS, or OS/2.
> >
> > By the time Novell 5 came out, the world had moved on. I've never even
> > touched the product.
>
> Well, I am a Netware 5 CNE, so I did "touch" it. (^-^)

Good to see a few of you still out there. Except for what I've written about 
the config issues, I still believe that NW is/was a superior product for 
workgroups and enterprise networks than LanMan (a.k.a. NT) and the 
still-developing AD concept.  I find it funny - my organization (96,000 
users) is putting in AD. The concepts being tossed about are ones I remember 
some of my more highly evolved NT 4x and 5x clients discussing in the late 
'90s. 

Again, it was a better product but poorly marketed and integrated for us VARs. 


> Though it is true that Netware 5 was already sinking fast and with the
> appearance of Windows 2000 Server quickly lost appeal. Featurewise it
> really wasn't a bad product, but I guess that you indeed almost had to be
> a CNE to configure even the basic server functions in Netware 5.

That's what I've heard.

>
> Added with the rather specialised and proprietary software you get an
> isolated product. Changing the kernel to linux and sell the directory as a
> standalone solution wasn't a bad decision.
>
> > I just hope the same arrogance and short-sighted vision doesn't plague
> > SUSE now and in the future. I really like this software and currently
> > advocate it over other *nix distros. Screwing up 10.1 with the
> > pre-release Zen updater was somewhat forgivable because we users expected
> > bleeding-edge product and could fall back on SMART or APT-GET or
> > something else. I certainly hope they don't make such a mistake with any
> > of the Novell Desktop products.
>
> I don't think they earn much money with desktop solutions. Most of the
> money is probably coming from SLES subscriptions and server solutions.
> So I don't believe they are putting special attention to desktop products.
> An exception might be solutions for the what-was-the-name-again... Suse
> Linux Enterprise Desktop, if I read the Novell's homepage right.

Well, I hope that they don't ignore the desktop. That's how MS rose, in my 
opinion. They focused on the desktop experience and then zeroed in on the 
servers. Fortunately they never gained full dominance in the server arena. 
Even my last employer had a dozen or so SLE servers among the menagare of 
NT/2K/2K3, OS/2, AIX, HPUX and ZOS servers.

I just wanted to get more SUSE clients going. :)


>
> Though I don't think that they will repeat the update and software
> management desaster in the following version again. One buggy version can
> be forgiven, if they release two consecutive versions with major bugs in
> important functions they will lose too much credibility.

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-- 
kai ponte
www.perfectreign.com