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Novell Linux Desktop Released
KingDaveRa writes "Novell have just released Novell Linux Desktop. Its based on SuSE Linux, but is cut down quite a bit to just include essential apps - perfect for a corporate environment. Novell claim to not be going directly after Windows, but rather pushing this as legacy Unix users. The Register has a take on this too."
Perhaps Novell can help in providing more legitimacy toward linux desktops to the Corporate World. It's not that linux desktops geared toward corporations haven't been around, but more the lack of a Name Brand company to trust purchasing it from. I'm being hopeful, but any amount this release can cut into Microsoft's market share is good for us all.
Steal This Sig
If Mandrake is working for you, why switch?
Meh.
Does anyone have a mirror or a bittorrent tracker? The site was sort of okay before 12:00 GMT+1 but now it's rather dead...
When you do things right, people won't be sure if you've done anything at all.
Yep, using pam_auth_ncpfs to get a Windows desktop to login to a Novell server would be crazy amounts of work. Fortunatly, they have this thing called the "Novell Client" which is for windows. It takes all of about 5 minutes to install. Windows 3.11, Windows 95, and all later versions, are specificlly built to accept network client drivers, like say, those from Novell.
Or do you mean it is crazy amounts of work for Novell to write a widows client? I doubt it. For Windows, Novell currently has two clients, one for 95/98 and one for NT/2000/XP. The "log into the server" part is a minor component, trivial in comparision to every thing else it does, ZENWorks integration for one.
And this is not Windows NT or Netware 3.12 days. You login to the network not into a server.
While not preinstalled, Windows has come with a Client for Netware Networks for as long as I can remember. I know that Novell recommends its client, but I have not had any issues with the MS client whenever I have used it.
Anyway, Novell was king of the network hill for a good while. It should have leveraged this position while it had it to put out its own desktop back then. It will be an uphill battle now.
Novell is going after the "low hanging fruit" in much the same way that Red Hat's biggest efforts to date have been in convincing Solaris customers to switch to Linux. What's the sense in attacking Microsoft outright when you can make more money somewhere else.
The folks at Novell know that over the long haul an inexpensive, secure, and stable no-frills desktop is going to make a market for itself just about everywhere. However, Novell is absolutely right in pointing out that for right now the obvious application is in locations where a minimal set of applications is needed.
To give you an example, I used to work in a french fry factory. The factory had about 90 PCs, but less than 20 of these PCs were used by office workers. The rest of the PCs were out in the plant and were used mostly to let people out on the floor view data. The machines out on the plant floor could easily have been running Linux, and it would have saved the company a substantial sum of money.
Novell knows that there are lots of businesses like that french fry plant, and they also know that in the long run once these locations get a little bit of experience with Linux clients that essentially run themselves that the IT folks are going to start looking at ways to migrate the remaining office workers to Linux. More importantly, when they buy or build new applications they will be far more likely to create the applications in a way that is portable to Linux.
Which brings us to the second part of Novell's master plan. Novell plans to use Mono to entice existing .NET developers into creating cross-platform applications.
Next time you're quoting me, don't cut out context just because it doesn't support your point. The "more than enough money" section you quote was about what they see from me. I don't see why _I_ need to support them any more than I already do.
And putting up with me downloading free copies of their distribution is one of the payments they make for the fact that THEY DISTRIBUTE CODE I WROTE.
In addition to this, SuSE had somewhere in the region of $500 directly because of me making recommendations to my clients over the last 2 years.
And, despite all of this, you're calling ME a freeloader? Go and get a life.