Replacing Novell with Linux?

RatzMilk asks: "The firm I work for has several clients who are still running Novell 4.11 which Novell is stopping support for in early 2001. As such they will require expensive upgrades to the latest version to be able to continue their support with Novell. I have suggested to one of the clients that they could replace their Novell with Linux which would have the added advantage of being able to utilize their existing hardware. The Novell upgrade would also require a hardware upgrade has well. They have agreed but their only concern was stability as the Novell boxen has been very reliable and Linux is an unknown to them. My company's policy is to provide the best possible support to our clients. My question to Slashdotters is, do you think I have made the right recommendation? Should I just do the switch with one client and see how it goes, or go the hole hog and recommend it to all?" Would Linux be the ideal solution in this case? Would BSD be any better or worse in this situation? And is holding on to the outdated hardware a good idea? As it is, systems can't go on forever, and depending on age of this system, maybe a full upgrade is a good idea.