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Novell Expects Vista to Spur Linux Adoption
It doesn't come easy writes "According to the Register, Novell expects the cost of upgrading to Vista will encourage many companies to turn to Linux instead. From the article: 'Jack Messman, chief executive of networking software vendor Novell says that 2006 will see widespread adoption of Linux on the corporate desktop. According to Messman the catalyst will be the release of Microsoft Windows Vista and the high costs associated with upgrading. Obviously, if they're right Novell hopes that turn will be toward SUSE Linux.'" We touched on this issue late last month, as well.
They've been saying this each time Windows releases something. Hasn't come true yet. So you decide, is Linux adoption "10 Years Off" or will it become mainstream with Vista's release? Or are they one in the same? All of this is merely speculation.
And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be bannana-shaped.
What makes him thing that anyone cares about updating? Even after the release of XP, look at all the 2000 and 98 boxes still in use. Why is the release of Vista going to have any more of an effect?
Could of easily been Apple on the receiving end of the influx.
However Apple does not seem interested in corporate clients past the Xserve.
self fullfilling prophecy
This could easily turn into a self fullfilling prophecy. The more the meme is repeated now, two years before Vista launch, the more it will grow in peoples minds. The more it grows there, the more thinking and the more planning.
IOW, keep repeating this! Windows Vista will make business switch to Linux. Say it enough and it becomes truth.
And there still has to be substantial per seat savings up front and integrated migration tools.
If they can pull off that package, yeah, they might a shot.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This'll spur movement towards Linux? Why wouldn't users just keep the OS they already have? If the point is to avoid retraining, migrating to Linux is one of the more ironic moves a man could make.
TLoM: Nerds + DDR + Rednecks for the win!
This reads like one of those "Hey, just reminding you we're still here" press releases.
Could this be the first sighting of "2006 will be the year of the Linux desktop?"
First...
"The requirements for Windows 9.x will make people turn to OS/2"
- Result, OS/2 is dead.
"The ridiculous requirements for Windows NT will increase adoption of NetWare"
- Result, NetWare died soon after.
"Novell expects the cost of upgrading to Vista will encourage many companies to turn to Linux instead."
-Result ?
It's been more than 10 years of these? Haven't we had enough?
Linux has its own niche; it is not meant to replace windoz boxes, and it will not replace them in the near future. So, who cares ?
I have just now downloaded OpenSuse 10. I'll install it and hope to see some improvements.
If Novell / Suse wants to get real desktop adoption, these are the things they need to do:
- The system needs to be more stable. Take a deep breath, slow down on the new features, and make it stable.
- THERE SHOULD BE ONLY ONE APPLICATION FOR EVERY TASK! This is so obvious and people have been saying it for years. On my Suse 9.3, if I want to control the volume, I go to Multimedia -> Volume control and I see NINE DIFFERENT VOLUME CONTROL APPLICATIONS, all of which work or don't work to varying degrees, and none of which are simple and easy to use and understand. That's crazy. That's on drugs. That's lame. Say whatever you want about how great Linux is but if my desktop has NINE DIFFERENT VOLUME CONTROL APPLICATIONS that is horrific. I bring up volume control, but the same problem exists in all the other application categories, but volume control is by far the worst offender. If users want to go crazy and install a dozen different word processors, fine, let them do it, but the default installation should have ONE and exactly ONE application in every category.
- There needs to be a good media player that is well-integrated and WORKS. I should be able to pop in a DVD which I got from Blockbuster and play it, with GUI controls, subtitles, everything, with no messing around. I should be able to go to CNN.com and look at video, with no messing around.
The first two items are not rocket science. They're not technology problems. They are management problems. Someone who is a technical manager high up in Novell should lay down the law on these two issues and make them happen. Say to the dev team, "If you think that such-and-such should be the ONE application for such-and-such task, make your case, and we'll have a decision process and at the end we'll pick one, and go with it."The media player part is more difficult because it's wrapped up in all kinds of legal licensing problems. They need to solve these problems. They are solvable with money, lawyers and time. Guess what, time to do it Novell!
you have to remember the system requirements and the drag to replace things, that plus the world market for the OS.
It's like Ford/GM/etc pushing bigger SUVs on a market that is dealing with gas prices doubling in months, while someone else (Toyota/Honda) is selling cheaper faster hybrids that are mass-manufactured.
At some point, the OS price and the total price point goes beyond what the consumer is willing to pay - nowadays it's all about the Net bandwidth and you're frequently better off buying a cheap laptop or PC or just using the PS3 or Nintento whatever instead.
When PCs and laptops cost $2000 for entry and $4000 for premium, the OS cost was only a fraction, and you could raise the OS price and people would eat it up. But now that the PC retails for around $300 and a laptop comes in around $1000, the OS cost becomes noticeable.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Support? What support? If I find a bug in Microsoft Office, do you think they will fix it and send me a new version? BS
At least I can pay an open source developer to fix bugs.
That's where Novell comes in I guess, but still Microsoft will always have a huge advantage, just in sheer support power.
Spoken like someone who has never needed to use Microsoft's "sheer support power". That's one area where using Novell could end up being a big plus.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I've tried recent versions of SuSE, Mandrake, and Xandros, and I have to say that Xandros is the closest thing yet to a usable, decent, Linux distribution. In the past I've been a little more willing to overlook the blemishes in free distributions, but they're basically a re-badged copy of all the software that has floated to the top of the open source world. I expect a little more from an operating system, and efficiency, expediency, and stability are foremost among my list of requirements.
If Windows Vista comes with an improved ability to make it look just like Windows 98/2000 insofar as file browsing, etc, goes then the chances of me sticking with it are greatly improved. The last time I tried Vista, file browsing was a complete abomination. They've candified it to such an extent that only the dumbest moron would feel at home using it.
Linux needs a little more polish and better integration. No more klipper workarounds for different clipboard standards. One volume control. Configurable file browsers that aren't big and chunky and as slow as an old jaloppy, either!
People will use whatever comes with the PC in the shop.
Oh well, what the hell...
For years, Novell's NetWare made PCs running MS OSes (like DOS and Win16) worth using, especailly for businesses. Novell was the network game for MS apps for most of the 1990s, even after Win95 for a while. Especially as a file/print/authentication server, anyone using MS for anything serious, from small offices to enterprises, used NetWare, especially as a gateway to any serious mainframe/mini network.
MS blew them out of the water with their unprecedented marketing of NT as a "network OS". NT was good enough to back up those claims, though not necessarily as good as NetWare. A combination of timing, marketing budget and general media infatuation with MS killed Novell in the market. For a while.
But Novell's been playing a great catchup game. Refusing to die, refusing to cash in sleazily on Linux (like their evil spinoff, SCO), refusing to get sucked down with the old Unix leviathan, Novell has arrived at the upcoming "Vista" juncture with great alternatives to MS apps. OpenGroupware is better than Exchange; Evolution is better than Outlook. NDS is better than ActiveDirectory. Their TCP/IP is better than the MS stack. SuSE is better than XP (except perhaps in overall desktop useability, so far). Of course each of those judgements is subjective, depending on one's priorities, but they're close enough for everyone, in the aggregate.
Novell has bought extremely viable techs with Ximian and SuSE, as well as others, that also integrate well into Novell's superior homegrown techs. They arrive on the scene with a brand long trusted for reliability, for "we'll still be around next year", for interoperability with Windows and others (Linux, Unix, etc). And their committment to open source seems complete, consistent and highly productive. When users get a chance to question their MS installations, due to an "upgrade now" marketing barrage from MS, Novell will be ready to catch some of the runoff. Many of which could be important beacheads inside larger MS organizations. When businesses see how well "Novell" Linux plays with MS systems, and how reliable is Novell's support (especially compared with MS), we might in fact see Novell turning the tables back on MS. People might again start to think about MS systems being "toys" until made serious by Novell business tech.
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make install -not war
"Its not like Linux has a billion versions for each distro of Linux" You're right... they just have a billion distros.
Microsoft has an army of trained bayesian modbots to score any pro-Microsoft comments as informative.
If your employees are installing software on your company machines then I'd say you're pretty much an idiot. Doesn't matter what the OS is, you're just an idiot. Letting your secretary determine which .exe/rpm is 'mission critical' for her job (e.g., a new version of Solitaire or Minesweeper, or perhaps XBill), then giving her the big high-five to go ahead and install said software as she sees fit...real bright, that.
Ease of installation isn't a viable corporate metric. In corporate America the idea is usually to make sure that the employee CAN'T install softare willy-nilly, because the employee is the most common point of failure in security. The idea is to a) make the GUI easy to use, or at least familiar (e.g., KDE looking like a clone of Windows), and b) to be sure that the apps can do the job you require them to do.
Linux can easily do a). I know, because I've set up more systems than I care to count and the most common misconception is that the KDE GUI configuration I use for Linux newbies is a 'new' version of Windows. Takes 'em all of a day (often much less time) to get used to the minor differences (e.g., having, say, 4 desktops instead of just one - a real hit with employees who rapidly discover that means they can have 4 different sets of rotating wallpapers! Really, that's a Much Bigger Thing(TM) for most employees than any technical issue).
As for b), most Linux apps can do anything the average employee requires, since said employee doesn't use 95% of the 'features' included in MS-based software anyway. Few businesses go beyond email/calendars/word processing/spreadsheets/etc. - basic business stuff. And that was pretty much mastered a decade ago, with only cosmetic changes since then.
The most common complaints I hear are that employee John Doe can no longer download and run apps he found on the internet, usually spyware disguised as cute animals that occasionally march across the screen or whatnot. And believe it or not, that's usually considered to be a *good* thing, at least by businesses who value the idea of not letting their employees compromise their systems with bouts of stupidity.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?