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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.
back when the Mindcraft fiasco was going on I emailed the Novell person responsible for the Mindcraft rebuttal site and he seemed genuinely *pissed* off at Microsoft. It's interesting because any other time I've mailed Novell on a topic having to do with something else I didn't get a reply (or at least a real reply).
Another point I'd like to make about Netware is while it is a superior product compared to NT the problem is that there aren't enough people who really know their way around Netware compared to those that do NT. That's going to really hamper Netware. They should do something like Sun and SCO do and sell cheap media kits/licenses. The more people that know Netware, the more likely it is going to be deployed in a commercial setting. I think this would be more sucessful in combatting M$ than just bitching and whining.
A directory service is very similar to NIS+ in the Unix world. It creates a central place for managing all user accounts. Though NDS is so far ahead of where NIS could ever be, specifically with regards to replacting the data, and sharing/exporting it into other formats such as LDAP. Its also important to mention that unlike Active Directory, NDS is *NOT* platform centric, it can operate perfectly fine on a network without any netware boxes. For example I operate a small e-commerce firm we have 3 Sun E250's and about 100 Linux boxes which run on Compaq proliants, we have *no* netware servers. But when I delete a user he disappears from all the systems, when I add a user I get to pick which groups (systems) he has access to. When he changes his password, the password changes on all the systems. Its a nice pretty java interface to manage the whole thing, its a bit slow under Linux but it runs well under CDE. NDS links into the PAM (Password Authentication Module) and really takes the headaches out of syncronizing passwords, etc. Right now we're just bringing up our Intranet webserver so all .htaccess logins are also authenicated against NDS. I hate having 26 different passwords on different systems. Did I mention NDS can also manage how many systems a person can be logged into? I know your wondering what happens if NDS goes down? (to be totally honest I have no clue, since it hasn't happened yet) but its supposed to read the local password file, we removed the root user and gave another "secret" user a root login, just enough access so I could reclaim the box if necessary, but NDS has been extremely reliable for us! I think we might have had more issues if we ran NDS on Netware since I think Netware is a poor excuse for an operating system. We're playing with the idea of running Netware for the marketing people so we can use ZenWorks to manage their workstations, Novell ZenWorks rocks, but it requires Netware. FYI: The linux verion of NDS isn't out yet, but i'm running the beta and it seems fine.
The truth is spoken in a whisper.
:) Or is that precluded by the fact that they speak the truth?
I was a Novell 4.x admin for 4 1/2 years before changing jobs and ending up in an NT assimilated state organization. I have also done a lot of time as a *nix power-user/sysadmin. Personally I'm a Mac/Linux guy.
NT shouts it FUD, and Novell quietly tells those that will listen about it's better product. And Novell continues to improve both the product itself and it's interoperability. 4 or 5 years ago, when the first Novell 4.0 came out, it was good, but I had a few frustrating problems with uptime and data corruption. By 4.01, they had it fixed and it was rock solid. I have more problems with NT 4.0 on a daily basis than I ever did with Novell 4.0's first release.
Coming from the Novell side to NT, I was struck by how much of a joke NT was, a baby Network OS. It didn't have the reliability, it didn't have the granularity to manage users and permissions that Novell did, didn't have the scalability, and there was a bunch of resource wasting GUI right on my server! God damn it, lock the server in a room and manage it from somewhere else. If you're gonna serve stuff (that's what a server is for, right?) put all that GUI somewhere else so the server can concentrate it's resources on what it supposed to be doing. Then maybe you dont have to run a PIII-800 with a Gig of RAM just to serve some files.
If there were employment options here where I choose to live (that being my first priority) that could get me back into a Novell or, even better, a *nix environment, I'd be on the move in a minute. Even leaving the frightening permanence of state service.
Bottom line: in every field there are better products, better ways of doing things, and solutions with great stability that are applicable. But in most cases, it's the liars, the charlatans, the snake oil salesmen - in short, those that shout the loudest - that end up winning. Yes, this is a sad state of affairs and depressing, but we just have to keep plugging away, trying to educate people.
Those of us who are educated, think critically and make good choices as a result will continue to experience the better products and the reduction in stress that comes with the use/management of them. Those who remain uneducated and naive, and listen to 'man behind the curtain' will be forever lost in pits of NT^H^H hell burning and rebooting day by day... unless we can educate them and remove their naivtee'.
It seems that Novell is trying to do this now, they just need to take out a lot more full page ads and plant some employees to post to groups and handle reporters.
In either case, I wish them luck.
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
The person who wrote
DID YOU KNOW that Windows 2000 may crash non-Microsoft DNS servers? should be larted.
I hate how MS has "embraced & extended" DNS, but
the fact that BIND dumps core when updated by W2K clients is BIND's problem, not Microsoft's!
Another fine study commisioned by Microsoft - "our friends in marketing".
r m/performance/zdlabs.asp It is a performance comparison between 6 identically configured PCs running Win 95, Win 98, NT 4 and Windows 2000 Pro.
9 9/w2krtmpr.asp that states, among other things: "Windows 2000 Professional is the fastest Windows client yet. Independent tests conducted by Ziff-Davis Labs and IT Week show that Windows 2000 Professional is up to 39 percent faster than Windows 95, 30 percent faster than Windows 98, and up to 24 percent faster than Windows NT Workstation 4.0 in configurations with 64 MB of memory or higher." After reading Microsoft's own performance study, I can't figure out how they can honestly state those numbers.
I just read the Microsoft "Windows 2000 Performance Tests" document, by ZD Labs, which is found at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/guide/platfo
According to Microsoft, NT 2000 Pro is faster than Windows NT 4 - as long as you only have 32M of RAM. If you have more than 32M of RAM, NT 4 takes the lead. With 128 MB of RAM, Windows 2000 was 3 percent slower than Windows NT 4.0. I wish they had done tests with 256M of RAM - if the tests indicate a trend, a 256M RAM NT 2000 workstation could be 5-10% slower than an identical NT 4 system.
What really disgusted me is how Microsoft improperly configured the NT 4 test systems, giving NT 2000 an unfair advantage. According to Microsoft's document describing the tests, the NT 4 platforms were configured with PIO mode IDE drivers, while the NT 2000 platforms were configured with DMA mode drivers. That gives NT 2000 a significant advantage - and it was still slower. In the system configuration documentation, MS specifically states they manually enabled DMA on the Win 95 and Win 98 systems. They do not do it for the NT 4 or NT 2000 platforms. Not surprisingly, NT 2000 auto detected and loaded DMA mode IDE driver support. The NT4 box is installed with service pack 5, so it could be manually configured for DMA support - as they did they did for the Win 9x systems. But then NT 2000 would have been slower.
Also, MS emphasized that the goal of the tests was to show performance in a real world scenario. Which brings up another question: why did they use a single 2G FAT 16 partition on all the systems? Who on earth uses FAT 16 partitions on real world NT deployments?
Microsoft has a marketing document at: http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/press/1999/dec
Um... I don't want this to sound like a flame, but what you are saying is just plain wrong, on almost every point.
;) and a place to store SOME driver and config files, and NOTHING MORE. The Netware OS completely takes over and shuts down DOS so completely that the DOS clock actually stops (if you DOWN and EXIT the server, and do a DATE and TIME from DOS, it will report the time and date the server was started..often years earlier!). The only thing DOS does once Netware is running is, if requested, load a device driver from either the floppy or the DOS partition of the disk (and you will see the performance really hurt when this happens, as it has to jump in and out of the 80x86 Real Mode, and they obviously felt no reason to optimize this). In fact, you can do a REMOVE DOS command which frees up the few hundred K of RAM used by DOS, and slightly improves console security (as you can no longer load anything from the floppy drive).
>It was (until recently) loaded on top of DOS
Netware v3 through v5 (and probably future versions) uses DOS as a BOOT LOADER (a task it is well suited for, in my opinion
OLD versions of Netware (Netware 86 and v2) were free-booting OSs. They were a pain to reconfigure. Using DOS as a boot loader really improved things at the cost of what is now a very insignificant amount of RAM overhead. I can pull a set of non-hardware RAID drives out of most any Novell server and have it BACK UP AND RUNNING on a totally different box (different disk controller, different NIC, different video card, different main board, etc.) in a matter of minutes (barring mechanical problems, like missing cables). I can't think of any other server OS which can make this claim.
>It still only has a DOS-like shell with no decent text processing utilities.
If you consider the Netware environment DOS-like, you have obviously never used many other OSs. The only thing it shares with DOS is a command prompt (i.e., it isn't a GUI). It gives you a command prompt, it has new tasks spawn off their own screens automatically (this is a really cool UI feature I wish Unix and other command prompt desktop OSs had!).
Text processing utilities? Huh? This is a file server OS, not a workstation OS! The LARGEST configuration files I have ever seen on a well-implemented Netware server were less than two pages long. The text editing facilities are limited, but you don't need WordPerfect (or Word 2000) to edit small configuration files. For reference, Netware gave you a full-screen text editor for editing these things when MS was still giving nothing better than edlin. The editor lets you type, correct, and even cut, copy and paste. Not bad for something that is used to edit tiny little files! It even qualifies as fairly intuitive. If you cut your teeth on Word 95 or even MS's EDIT, you may disagree, but EDIT.NLM was implemented long before these products..it can't be faulted for not following their "lead"... It certainly wins prizes compared to vi or emacs for "hit the ground running".
>And until Netware 5, it used an outmoded proprietary network protocol.
Proprietary, yes. Certainly. Stupidly, even (they should have thrown it open long ago instead of militantly demanding licensing fees). Outmoded? Hardly. First of all, IPX is a near zero-maintenance protocol. You provide a unique number for all servers (I use the license number to ensure uniqueness) and for each NICs/protocol set. After that, you just plug in workstations, no IP numbering problems. Hey, every NIC has an address, might as well use it, right? Move a WS? Reboot, and it is back up and running at its new location. Of course, some IS people hate it for just this reason...it doesn't ensure job security as IP does.
The number one reason I like IPX/SPX now, however, is the security. Now that so many offices are connected to the Internet, there are real security issues if you have systems live on the 'net. You have to have and maintain a good, solid firewall at all times. Or...use IPX/SPX for all your private company operations, and use TCP/IP ONLY for getting outside the building! Talk about a perfect firewall: A server which doesn't even recognize the hostile protocols running around the wire. I actually don't care for Netware 5 for just that reason. It scares the heck out of me to think of any server of any kind (probable exception: OpenBSD) holding company data sitting live on the Internet. Again, though..job security for IS people.
>I don't know much about the latest version, but it still looks like something that came out of the ark.
The same would be said of a Unix command prompt by someone who didn't know much about it.
Netware IS a server platform! It is NOT a general purpose OS, and it NEVER was intended to be! Please judge this very capable, very solid platform at the job it was intended and sold to be.
As for adherence to open standards, this is a personal preferance, and one I respect. Ultimately, however, it is results that count. For most businesses, the computer is only a tool to their business, not the goal in and of itself. Netware is the closest thing to "set and forget" networking I have seen, and the fastest repair time OS I have seen. This is very critical to real-world business. Would I run a Web server on Netware? Heck, no. Would I port Doom to Netware? No (although the XWindows interface of Netware 5 would potentially make it a cute stunt). Would I relish the thought of implementing a client-server database engine on Netware? No, although the results would be delicious, the process would be very painful, though NW4x and 5 make it less so. Would I use it as a platform for E-mail or Internet access? No, there are better choices. As a file and print server, however, which is a critical service in most PC-based business now, I haven't found a way to beat it.
Yes, there are few really good people at Netware installation, configuration, and troubleshooting but my experience is there are no more who (really) know NT. NO ONE has more than what, three years of experience with NTv4? I've got five years professional experience with Netware 4, and another six years professional experience with Netware 3, which Netware 4 builds on very directly (and another four years of experience with earlier versions, but NW3+ is so different from NW2- that it doesn't really help much).
I would argue that having an network OS that is "easy" to set up and get running is very counter-productive. You don't want newbies setting up the backbone of your business! Many people consider the loading of an OS the measure or success..these people don't even understand how far they are from success.
O.k...enough with my soap box. I don't mean to attack you or anyone personally. I'm just very tired of people who don't understand the product condemming Netware for totally bogus reasons, and treating this product which the rest of the industry has yet to surpass as a has-been.
Nick.
Here's a link if you are interested in reading some of MS's reponse, especially concerning Active Directory. There are two previous parts linked at the bottom. I not sure if I'll know what to believe after all FUD settles.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
The Turtle and the Rabbit will duke it out while the penguin waddles ever closer to the proverbial finish line...
/me wonders if we will see this battle move into the T.V. arena...
"Netware hates, children, do you hate children? Vote Windows for 2000!"
"Gates had lots of pr0n in college, do you want pr0n in the hands of children? Vote NetWare in 2000!"
This may be more fun then the 2000 U.S. presidential elections.
NightHawk
I run a Netware 4.11 box at work for file/print/directory, and an NT box for mail/proxy (I know, I know - I'm building Linux boxen to replace it). I know NT much, much better than Netware for one simple reason - the Netware box never needs any attention. It sits in a dark room and hums along, oblivious to the world. I patch it every 9 months or so, but otherwise it's never down. NT, on the other hand, has made me an expert - I can rebuild an NT box in my sleep (because I've had to).
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."