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Novell 'Drinking Their Own Champagne'

Posted by timothy on from the consider-the-source dept.

TheMMaster writes "According to Novell, they will be using their own flavour of Linux (SUSE) on the desktops of their 6000+ workers. While this was already known for quite some time, what wasn't quite so known was why and how they did it. Novell is moving from Microsoft to Linux and OpenOffice. Here's how it's being done."

6 of 21 comments (clear)

  1. Success stories? by Otter · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Those "success stories" in the sidebar are kind of grim to anyone who has been paying attention for a while.
    • Burlington Coat Factory (I'm sure I read about that on pre-account Slashdot)
    • Largo, FL (big fuss, years ago)
    • Munich (now held hostage to posturing over software patents)
    • Howard County Library (woohoo, a couple of web kiosks)
    • Mexico City (another one that goes back almost to Chips and Dips -- did it even happen in the end?)

    How about Extramadura? There are probably more Linux desktops in that operation than in this whole list. And we haven't been hearing about it since 1998.

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
    1. Re:Success stories? by JabberWokky · · Score: 2, Informative
      Largo is happy with Linux and expanding its usage. Burlington Coat Factory is still Linux, I believe. So is... uhh... the tire company. I know because a month or so back, I shoulder surfed their system when I drove a friend to get new tires.

      Seems to me that people switch, are happy, and go back to their business. "Business has computers" isn't much of a story, the switch is.

      --
      Evan

      --
      "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  2. Beer! by dacarr · · Score: 2, Funny

    No no no, we should be calling it their own beer. After all, it is free software, and Linus likes his beer. And so should you.

    --
    This sig no verb.
  3. Chicken or the Egg? by Ridgelift · · Score: 4, Interesting

    OpenOffice.org is just the beginning. A wide variety of desktop applications, including Web browsing and office productivity software, are available at low cost or no cost. Many of these apps not only run on Linux, but also offer versions for Windows, Mac OS X, UNIX and others. What's more, several big-name software providers, from Novell to Oracle, are making their robust and well-tested enterprise applications available on Linux as well.

    Good. And they will no doubt run into interoperability problems that other ambitious migration projects have. Of course the big difference is Novell is a position to do something about it. They can commission groups of paid and volunteer programmers to fix what doesn't work, so that we can all benefit.

    Maybe there's some ex-Microsoft employees out there that can pitch in. Computing may become fun again after all for the masses.

    --
    Ruby on Rails Screencast
  4. The MOVE by cslibby · · Score: 2

    I sure wish more companies would be willing to look at this. Novell even has a replacement for Exchange Server. YEAH for Novell!!!!!!

    1. Re:The MOVE by chbauer · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yes. Its called Groupwise (http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise/).