Slashdot Mirror
Domain: novell.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to novell.com.
Stories · 112
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Voltage Frugal PCs?
Red Rocket asks: "There's no shortage of information on building special-purpose PCs. Water-cooled PCs, refrigerated PCs, overclocked monsters, quiet PCs, tiny PCs... it's all there. But there seems to be little info about building a PC that sips the minimum juice from the power grid. So I'd like to throw it out to the Slashdot throng to see what you've done." It would seem like a PC with a low power consumption would be an interesting selling point, especially for those people who are more concerned with something other than high clock speeds. Is there someone marketing a low-powered PC solution (CPU and monitor), if not how difficult and at what expense would it cost to build one?"I'm going to leave this thing on 24x7 using electricity that I'm paying for so power consumption becomes a real issue. Which CPUs, chipsets, memory technology, and hard drives provide the thinnest power profile for an always-on machine? I'll be running NetWare because it provides the stability of Linux/BSD, exceeds the configuration ease of Windows, and provides the security and worm/virus immunity of...well, NetWare. That'll let me set up that yummy iFolder [novell.com] and have constant access to my data from anywhere on the Net. It also means I'll probably need to stick to an AMD or Intel CPU since AFAIK the Transmeta and Cyrix/VIA chips, like most IS managers, don't really get NetWare. CPU speed isn't much of an issue. 633 MHz should be plenty. Am I the only miser setting up a server?"
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Dorm Storm?
The Ape With No Name writes: "I work as a network technician at a major Southern university and we are gearing up for what is lovingly called "Dorm Storm," aka the weekend the students return to their dorm rooms, ethernet connections and BearShare. We'll move in approx. 3500 students, install and configure 1500 or so network cards and troubleshoot hundreds of circuit, switch and routing problems over the course of the next two weeks (with less than 50 people or so). I was wondering if anybody out in the academic computing community had some advice, stories to relate, yarns to spin for the rest of Slashdot with regard to other universities and their networking for students. You might think you have had a hell of a time setting up machines for users, but this becomes a Sisyphean task when you face a wireless, IP only, Novell setup for a grumpy architecture student on a budget Win2K laptop - one after another after another!" -
The Quiet Death Of Intelligent NICs?
Captain Novell asks: "Have you ever wondered what happened to the likes of the Intel Intelligent Server Adaptor? I have, one day it was on their site and then, later...*poof*...it was gone, only to be replaced by this Windows 2000 IP/Sec card! With tears in my eyes I went looking for any other manufacturer that had Intelligent NICs, but all I could found was this IP/Sec rubbish! (for those of us who run OSI complient software, a TRUE intelligent adaptor will off-load part of the OSI stack to the card and usually has some form of large cache on-board a.k.a. the old Intel Intelligent Adaptor card. I recommend server adaptors to many sys admins! Does the Slashdot community have any advice on where I can still find these elusive devices?" -
Samba And Netatalk - Is There A Better Solution?
Traverser asks: "I'm looking for a solution that allows Windows and Apple users to share a file store. Samba works great for the Windows systems. Netatalk works great for the Apple users. But each solution has its own style of file locking on the server: which means that if the same file were opened under Netatalk and Samba at the same time, there is a chance the file would become corrupt and unusable. Putting Dave on the Macintosh provided further layers of troubles. The WindowsNT AppleTalk driver doesn't seem to like Netatalk. WebDAV seems like a good alternative, except the tools are not mature enough on the Macintosh side to put in a production enviorment. NFS seems like a better solution, except the price per client suggests moving towards a commercial solution. Novell has moved support of the Netware Macintosh client to ProSoft Engineering. The current Novell client is still buggy and there is no visible development for a new client. I hate to say it but I'm back to the Microsoft solution. I really hope I'm missing something..." -
Novell vs. Microsoft - Benchmarks
I Just found this article in The Register which talks about KeyLabs comparing Novell's NDS eDirectory vs. MS's Windows 2000 Active Directory. Here is the KeyLabs benchmark report (requires PDF reader) and here is another link to Novell's eDirectory Benchmark. (also, here is what Novell says about it). I'm sure this is only round 1 and we will surely see some other reports... -
Novell vs. Microsoft - Benchmarks
I Just found this article in The Register which talks about KeyLabs comparing Novell's NDS eDirectory vs. MS's Windows 2000 Active Directory. Here is the KeyLabs benchmark report (requires PDF reader) and here is another link to Novell's eDirectory Benchmark. (also, here is what Novell says about it). I'm sure this is only round 1 and we will surely see some other reports... -
Novell vs. Microsoft - Benchmarks
I Just found this article in The Register which talks about KeyLabs comparing Novell's NDS eDirectory vs. MS's Windows 2000 Active Directory. Here is the KeyLabs benchmark report (requires PDF reader) and here is another link to Novell's eDirectory Benchmark. (also, here is what Novell says about it). I'm sure this is only round 1 and we will surely see some other reports... -
Novell Launches Anti-Win2k Campaign
skajohan writes "Is it time for Microsoft to taste some serious FUD themselves? Novell has launched an anti-Win2k campaign. Surprise, surprise, they'd rather see us run Netware. It starts out with a rebuttal of previous MS claims. This can get interesting." If MS and Novell were running against each other for political office, newspaper editorialists would be muttering about "negative advertising" and "smear campaigns." These companies are not playing nice with each other. -
Novell Launches Anti-Win2k Campaign
skajohan writes "Is it time for Microsoft to taste some serious FUD themselves? Novell has launched an anti-Win2k campaign. Surprise, surprise, they'd rather see us run Netware. It starts out with a rebuttal of previous MS claims. This can get interesting." If MS and Novell were running against each other for political office, newspaper editorialists would be muttering about "negative advertising" and "smear campaigns." These companies are not playing nice with each other. -
Ex-Novell CEO praises FreeBSD
Bob Frankenberg was CEO of Novell in the early nineties, when Novell were marketing DR-DOS as a replacement for MS-DOS (DR-DOS is now the subject of a law suit between Caldera and Microsoft). In part of this CBS interview he explains why his new company, Encanto, is not using Microsoft software, and why they chose FreeBSD. Read on for a few notes.There are a number of interesting things to take from this article. It's unsurprising that an ex-Novell CEO does not want to use MS software after the way Novell were treated by them, it is mildly surprising that he hasn't chosen a Novell, or other 'industry standard' solution.
Encanto's choice of FreeBSD over Linux is also interesting. Naturally, we all know that FreeBSD is the best choice (heh heh heh :-)), but Linux (or Solaris) would be the anti-MS knee jerk choice. Using FreeBSD suggests that they've actually investigated the different OS choices open to them, and chosen one on merit -- or that the first SA they hired preferred FreeBSD over Linux.
As ever, the media have got the licensing issues wrong. One of the key things about the BSD license is that you don't have to contribute enhancements back to the original codebase if you don't want to -- of course, that doesn't stop many companies from doing so anyway, because it's better business sense in the long run.
Having looked at the Encanto web site, and the products they're selling, the license may very well be the key issue. They sell network appliances -- plug and play web servers, that sort of thing, and the ability to make proprietry changes to the code base to support their product (and enhance their product's value) without having to disclose those changes is probably key to their business plan.
This is quite similar to the approach taken by Whistle and their Interjet devices. Whistle have been the classic example of a company which has contributed code back, even though the license doesn't force them to -- typically 6 to 12 months after they've deployed it in their product, and reaped the commercial benefit. This lets them recoup their development costs plus profit, and lets the rest of the community benefit from (and extend and support) the code later on.
Finally, CBS's phrase, "so-called open-source software" should get them a stiff letter from ESR...
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Novell to support Linux with NDS
One of our readers writes "Check out the press release that says that Novell is porting NDS to Linux. This could mean that Linux will stand a good chance to penetrate the data center--just another step toward world domination. Plus NDS v8 can support a billion directory entries. " Novell is saying it will be availible by calender year 99-keep our fingers crossed. -
Netware for Linux Review
Infoworld has an review of Caldera's Netware for Linux. Unfortunately, it did not receive the rave reviews Samba did. Given that Caldera licences it from Novell who have their own OS, it might be in Novell's interest to limit its performance and configurability on other platforms. Thanks to contributor Mark Stone for this one.