Brainshare Reports: NLD 10, Novell's Linux Switch

An anonymous reader submits "Computer World has an article about Novell Linux Desktop 10, which was just announced at Brainshare, that it plans to compete directly with Windows. One of the biggest things about NLD 10 is that it will have the desktop search engine Beagle as a feature." Also from Brainshare, Joe Barr writes on NewsForge about the significance of Novell's ongoing (multi-year) transition to Linux for all of its 6,000 desktops. Consultants and software sellers of all stripes won't soon run out of TCO arguments for the products they want to push, but Novell claims to have saved $900,000 last year in Microsoft license fees alone.

Comments

Alone?

[Otter]

Consultants and software sellers of all stripes won't soon run out of TCO arguments for the products they want to push, but Novell claims to have saved $900,000 last year in Microsoft license fees alone.

Y'see, the point of "total" is that you're not looking at individual costs "alone"...

Re:Alone?

[man_of_mr_e]

I think what is meant is that you can say you saved $900,000 last year alone on MS licenses, but what did you pay in new costs to make up for it?

Now, Novell is in a unique situation. Since they own SuSE they don't have to pay SuSE license fees, so i'm sure that saves them a chunk of change, and they don't have to purchase service contracts because they're their own service facility.

Re:Alone?

[Thud457]

Linux is free only if Novell's time is worth nothing.

or sumpthin'.

Re:Alone?

[Daniel Phillips]

I think what is meant is that you can say you saved $900,000 last year alone on MS licenses, but what did you pay in new costs to make up for it?

Right, and also what other costs might you save?

daily malware cleaning
lower hardware cost
license auditing costs
downtime costs


Not to mention, having access to thousands of free applications, many that are best of breed.

Re:Alone?

[NatteringNabob]

The Total will end up being a lot more than $900,000 per year. Microsoft TCO studies notwithstanding, anybody that has actually tried to keep both a Windows Network and a Linux/Unix network up and running will tell you that the Unix boxes are a lot less effort. Just being able to NFS mount applications from a handful of application servers instead of installing on every single machine is a godsend, as is the total lack of real, live Linux viruses. Again, MS FUD notwithstanding, theoretical viruses are much easier for a system administrator to deal with than actual ones.

Re:Alone?

[duderdice]

Looking at it from a business investment point of view, let's find the return on investment. Say it takes a cool $7.2 million to make this transition (6,000 employees spending 40 hours training/learning/downtime @ $30/hr = $7.2 million). Shaving $900K per year pays you back in 8 years ($900K * 8 = $7.2 mil), because those licensing costs they saved are recurring. Using the 'rule of 72' from investing, if we make our money back in 8 years, we're getting roughly 9% return on an investement. That's probably close to the ROI cut off of most businesses, and when you factor in the competitive advantages of

1. not supporting a competitor
2. eating your own dog food and learning from it
3. being on the leading edge of change in the tech industry

sounds like Novell has made a pretty good move. Of course this business case is shot if the costs of transition go thru the roof, but if you do it intelligently (i.e. stepwise, like it sounds they are doing), its easily managed and should be a success. I wish they were hiring, though, because they seem like one of the few companies with a head on its shoulders about how to deal with opportunity and change in this brave new world of Free software. Of course, if my numbers don't convince you, just use common sense - most of the rest of the world is embracing GNU/Linux pretty strongly and if we don't .... well, let's just say "You can pry my Longhorn DVDs from my cold, jobless fingers!"

Re:Alone?

[misleb]

They might be their own service facility, but they still have to pay someone to do the work, just like anyone else.

-matthew

Re:Alone?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not to mention, having access to thousands of free applications, many that are best of breed."

Name 50 of these free best of breed appps that also have no Windows platform ports.

Changed their mind.

[FreeLinux]

that it plans to compete directly with Windows.

The funny thing about this was that in the past and at last year's Brainshare, Novell had stated that they had no intention of competing directly against Windows. They even insinuated that attempting such competition was madness.

By the way. Joe Barr reported yesterday that SuSE 9.3 Professional will also include Beagle. Not that you can't download Beagle anyway.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[jav1231]

Yeah, like they know to go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Office\Word\ now and find winword.exe? Why don't they just go find it in the menu like they do with Windows? Oh, because your whole point would be moot.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Blob Pet]

except that a regular user isn't going to have permission to move oowriter. It's perfectly acceptable, though, if the user decides to make a link in ~/programs/oowriter/oowriter.

If anyone can do it, Novell can. But can they?

[jht]

Novell has the resources and expertise to make Linux a truly viable desktop OS for Joe Corporate User. That all said, I'm not sure they will be able to out-market Microsoft enough to make a dent - even with their new management that's come in over the last couple of years, Novell remains the prototypical company that would open up a sushi bar, and advertise it with a sign saying:

"Cold Raw Dead Fish for Sale!"

(and I'm a Novell Partner- i like Novell!)

I've seen their new Open Enterprise Server (the SuSE/NetWare fusion) and it's tremendously impressive - I spent time in a class on it last week. The current NLD (based on SuSE 9.0) is a good solid desktop, which I run on one of my Dell boxes. Somebody out there is going to make Linux into a truly viable desktop player, and it'll probably be Novell in spite of their poor marketing skills.

I just hope that NLD doesn't turn out to be the "only" shot at a widespread penetration of the corporate desktop for Linux in general. Linux is doing just fine on the back end, but on the desktop right now the only real "alternative" is Apple - we need a good Linux-based Third Option to really start nibbling away at Windows.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[AusG4]

How about having your applications all in /Applications and not have any useless "Start Menu" clone with symlinks to real programs... like on OS X?

Oh, because that would make -sense- ...

How is windows different?

[bluGill]

Everytime I get a new machine at work I need to spend a little time setting it up. Doesn't matter if it is FreeBSD, Linux, or Ms Windows, I have to spend some time making it work like I like it.

Companies replace computers often. Generally every 2-3 years, though some go much longer. Companies upgrade Windows often, mixing Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, and XP on the desktop is more pain than it is worth, so they standardize on one (or two), and every once in a while migrate everyone to the new one as the old OS looses support for new machines. Once again time is taken setting up those machines.

Re:Novell may get us something we need: drivers.

[Anonymous Coward]

and this very short-sighted attitude of "just make it work" so we can convince the insignificantly small community of potential Linux users who blanch at the thought of their bizare HW not working is what the rest of the open source community doesn't appreciate. HW specs and interfaces need to be open so anybody can write a driver be it OpenBSD, Linux, or whomever.

Re:deb vs. rpm

[rpdillon]

Windows in no way prevents pebkac. You're talking about an OS that has, until recently, had no notion of a user without administrator priviledges. Microsoft has yet to to produce a version of Windows that does not set a user as an administrator by default. Windows is pebkac heaven. And Microsoft has no excuse; *nix has had the notion of unpriviledged users since the 70's.

Next...package management. Most (but not all) mainstream programs already exist in good package management respositories. Debian has their own, Gentoo has their own, even Red Hat and SuSe have their own. This doesn't require the vendor of the product to do anything. The Mozilla foundation doesn't produce .deb, .ebuild and .rpm packages, and yet I can install Firefox and Thunderbird with no problem on all the above operating systems.

Oh, and to answer your question, apt-get works on both Fedora-based and Debian-based distros. Oh, and on Debian, I can use alien to install RPMs. Not that it matters, since they're different operating systems. This is like complaining that Windows and Mac OS X don't use the same installer. You pick an OS, you pick an installer.

So...I'm not really sure what you're saying. There IS one well known method for installation for each Linux operating system, and the makers of the OS use it, and (most times) provide packages through that system, whether it be portage, apt-get, yum, yast, up2date, or whatever.

You are errant in treating "GNU/Linux" as a single operating system. It isn't. SuSe is a single OS, Red Hat is a single OS, Debian is a single OS, Gentoo is a single OS. And they each have a way to install Firefox and Thunderbird that "just works", and is in fact quite superior to anything Windows offers, or ever has offered.

Re:Novell may get us something we need: drivers.

[labratuk]

I don't care if they are bnaries, the important think would be that any Linux user could get hold of one.

Unless they're running on something 'unsupported' like ppc or sparc. Or are running an 'unsupported' version of gcc or glibc. Or are trying to run the hardware three years after the vendor last bothered updating the driver so that it won't work on a modern kernel.