Novell to Make Linux Robust and Reliable

An anonymous coward writes: "It seems the folks over at Novell have the answer to making the "immature" Linux OS more "robust, reliable and scaleable" according to this Computer Weekly article. We have a lot more problems to use and keep running our NetWare 5 and 6 servers at our University than we've ever had with any of our Linux servers. I can't wait for Novell to help us out here."

Comments

Overstated but could be beneficial to Linux

[dtolton]

"It hasn't had somebody like Novell worrying about making it
robust, reliable and scalable. We think we can bring that to the
Linux kernel."

I guess IBM, HP and the like are peanuts compared to Novell.

While his comments are certainly brash, and probably overly
self-important, Netware really did make a good system.
Ultimately they just got crushed under the Microsoft marketing
machine. I've run both Microsoft and Novell networks and I
definitely thought Netware was by far the superior product. As
we've consistently seen in the IT world though, a good product
isn't the only thing you need.

In a sense he has a point about Linux being an immature
operating system, although that point seems a bit overstated.
Personally though, I'd love to see Novell contributing to Linux.
The beauty of Open Source and in this case the GPL, is that
Novell can contribute to the development of Linux, but they
can't hijack it. Having more good companies contribute to
making it reliable and scalable is a good thing. I can't see a
downside to having them make contributions to the project.

Ultimately the point is that Linux is catching on. Even
companies like Sun and Novell that have their own operating
systems are seeing the value and are beginning to support it.
With broad industry support, Linux could supplant Microsoft as
the dominant OS.

Re:Overstated but could be beneficial to Linux

[TheOrquithVagrant]

"No attempt" indeed. I guess you are right, but only because IBM hasn't "attempted" to give Linux missing enterprise features, but rather simply DONE it.

Or did we all just hallucinate EVMS, the port of jfs, and the work IBM have done to help better SMP scalability on large systems? Sheesh.

There are VERY few "enterprise features" that commercial UNIX's have which linux doesn't, by now. Massive SSI multiprocessor scalability still isn't competitive with Irix or Solaris. AFAIK, there is still no support for hot-swapping memory in linux, even on hardware that supports that featre. But apart from that, I really can't think of much in the OS itself. Maturity of _documentation_ on the other hand is an area where some catching up is needed.

Hey wait a second

[vivek7006]

It seems the folks over at Novell have the answer to making the "immature" Linux OS more "robust, reliable and scaleable"

I thought IBM had already made linux more robust, reliable and scaleable, by stealing code from SCO.

Tempest in a teapot

[AndyDeck]

Slashdot is a bit late to this story, actually. Messman pretty much just stuck his foot in his mouth, if he was even quoted correctly. Check out Bruce Peren's comment, and a response from Kristopher Magnusson (chair of Novell's Open Source Review Board) at http://lwn.net/Articles/28988/. Novell does seem to understand that Linux already has value, they just want to bring their value to the table.

I've almost got to believe that Jack Messman was trying to make some kind of joke about the SCO/IBM lawsuit in this comment, and has just been horribly mis-understood.

Novell's mistake: speed over safety

[PylonHead]

We all remember when lan filesharing meant Novell. Their protocols were fast; their server was solid. They used to brag about the number of assembly language instructions between the time when a file request hit the server and the time it was being sent out.

Part of this speed came from having a very simple, unprotected operating system. Any process on the server could bring down the entire server. Novell's code was very well debugged and very stable.

And then networking started to mean something other than just filesharing. People started developing client/server applications to run on servers.

The company I worked for developed
NLMs (netware loadable modules) back in the day. It was a pain in the ass. Our code had to be flawless, because a single mistake would "abend" the server, taking down not only our services, but the lan filesharing, and everyone else's services too.

Mind you, we tested our code, we did everything we could to make it flawless, but that's a difficult standard to obtain in a complex piece of code.

Novell eventually tacked on some memory protection to the OS, allowing some NLMs to run at ring 1. But it seemed like too little too late.

Developers were realizing that it was a lot easier to develop and deploy server code on protected operating systems (Unix and Windows), and the speed bonus that Novell got by writing a down and dirty operating system was becoming less critical as machines got faster.

The same thing will happen with Palm OS vs Windows CE and Linux for the handhelds. The miserly memory handling and power consumption features of Palm OS will not be needed in future devices, and modern operating system features will win out.

An operating system != operating system

[On Lawn]

It might be a good time to remind that although here on slashdot we know what an operating system is, many people out there still have different notions of it. I think he's more talking about network operating systems (an old 80's term) more then computer operating systems which we more identify as Linux.

Most of what Novell does is rather mature on that level. Much more so then Linux, but probably not as much as he thinks. It has great directory, authentication and network file systems. A good AFS, LDAP, Kerberos run Linux domain is perhaps less of a polished product then Novell, but it is not far behind.

But thats only a part of what a NOS does. Consider Groupwise, ZenWorks and other products inherent to a Novell network and you'll quickly realize that there is nothing near as mature on Linux right now. (note: Ximian just recently put out Enterprise Red Carpet, which I haven't evaluated.)

So while I may agree that I wouldn't have chosen his terms, its still important to understand his use of them before critisizing them

Novell had a lot of things going for it

[SuperBanana]

Netware really did make a good system.

I agree, but realize Novell had a lot of things going for it:

• They tightly controlled what was Novell certified, and what wasn't. Admins didn't buy hardware unless it had that little red sticker on it that said "Novell Certified". When you limit the subset of hardware and software, you make QA infinitely easier, and your operating system's reputation isn't tarnished by some guy selling video cards out of the back of his truck that cause novell servers to die(people constantly confuse OS reliability with hardware stability). It isn't just simplifying your hardware/software base though- Apple had(well, ok, still does, to some extent) this theory, except that the quality of code and QA -before releases went out the door- was piss-poor; even today it's pretty bad; case and point would be 10.2.5, which is reputed to be causing a lot of kernel panics related to USB. They have the same problem with hardware- almost everything they ship is defective in at least a half dozen ways(some of them minor, some of them very much not so.)
• Novell never had to worry about making a desktop OS; in the server world, #1 priority is reliability, and so you don't have to worry about adding the latest this-or-that. Servers are simpler than desktops; they're asked to do a limited number of things, comparatively, but just do it on a big scale. It's like the difference between -most- Linux distros, and OS's like OpenBSD; do one thing(network/serving) and do it well. The big boys(and even the little guys) only cared about keeping their fileserver up 24x7x365. Novell could do that exceptionally well. Remember, you can't make everyone happy all of the time, so why bother trying? I wish linux distros would grow up and find their market segments instead of trying for everything. Even Apple has recognized the need for separate desktop and server "distros".
• Network services back in Novell's hayday were a hell of a lot simpler than they are today. It used to be all you really had to handle was logins to the network from a workstation, printing, and filesharing, and chances are you could do it with a limited amount of hardware. That was it. Nowadays, networks are far, far more complicated and decentralized, AND at the same time you've got people who want to run a NATing gateway, print server, SMB, mail, web...and slice their veggies, all with one box.

Not the Message at BrainShare

[Kur]

Oddly, I'm currently at BrainShare and he did not make those sort of comments during his keynote this past Monday. In fact, he even made fun of Scott McNealy's penguin suit and set a positive tone about Novell's interaction with Open Source. He also made a point about Novell being slow to listen to market changes and how that was being changed (he used IPX as the example).

The actual product roadmap came from Chris Stone, the vice chairman. Unlike the arrogant comments by Messman in the linked article, Stone seemed much more humble. He talked about the various Open Source technologies shipping with the next version of NetWare (6.5), including MySQL, Tomcat 4, Apache 2, and PHP 4. Finally, he announced that Netware 7 would run either the Netware kernel or the Linux kernel. He made it clear, however, that Linux was the ultimate destination. There wasn't any dismissal of Linux, especially since they expect to base all of their products on top of it.

Does Novell have anything to contribute?

Well, they claim that they've contributed back many improvements to PHP, Apache, and MySQL. Some, they said, were still forthcoming but that they would be available to the larger community.

As far as their products go, they still make a surprisingly large number of good ones. Many of the services that do run on Netware, including iPrint, iFolder, NetStorage, etc. would be a welcome addition to any operating system. eDirectory's already available cross platform, so nothing is new is gained there. Provisioning and user account management with Netware/eDirectory is still superior to many alternatives and makes administering a large number of users very easy (especially for support folks).

So, I think Jack Messman's comments are regrettable, but I don't really care what he thinks. I'm here at BrainShare to speak with the developers of the products we use and they, almost universially, get it. In nearly every session I've attended, they've highlighted solutions available from Freshmeat, SourceForge, CPAN, and others. I think it's especially helpful since most of the attendees here are not Slashdot readers. They're old school Novell admins working in a range of industries, from very large corporations to small business consultants. Despite the bravado from some CEO, Novell's participation should be welcomed and encouraged. After all, if they're contributing something useful, why not?

Yeah, I guess it's better...

[fireboy1919]

As long as you don't want your system to be nifty (what I would call elegant) in any way.

Forget having modern extensions and X11R6 applications. You can't have them.

And color terminals? Add them yourself! And forget about user support! You'll pay them good money if you want support!

What about advancing the gnu tools to the current level? You want recursive grepping? Color "ls"? Tar support for bzip2 and gzip? These are only the common ones that I've noticed are subpar compared to linux - I'm sure there are many others that I don't use. Wait until the next version of Solaris and maybe it'll get added.

The hardware will be great, though - for only ten times what you pay for commodity hardware you get reliability (just ignore the fact that if you buy quality hardware for PCs that cost about twice that amount you'll get the same level of quality).

I've yet to see that Solaris is elegant. It works, but it sure ain't pretty - not even compared to Linux. What they offer is reliability that comes from good hardware.

And don't give me any stuff about not rebooting for 4 years - you can do the same with flavors of Linux designed for that. There's more to it than software stability now.