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.

Comments

win2k support

[Dink Paisy]

I agree that the discontinuation of Windows 2000 support is likely to have a much bigger impact on Linux migration. Also note that for most enterprises, the big costs will be installation and retraining, not licensing costs. So depending upon how Windows Vista looks in those departments, it could drive more people to Linux or it could make people who are currently looking at Linux stay with Windows.

If there are significant changes that are seen as positive, Windows Vista could well solidify Microsoft's hold on the corporate desktop. And a quick glance at the Office 12 screenshots ought to disprove the people who think that Microsoft isn't innovative. Although I'll withold judgement on whether this particular innovation is good or bad until I've actually used it. Which is likely what corporations will do when considering Windows Vista versus Linux, as well.

Re:That may be true

[FlamingLaird]

What killed Novell in the first place was it's inability to intigrate with PCs running Windows. Everyone wanted an Exchange server - so they installed a domain controller - And once they had an NT domain in place there wasn't a whole lot of reason to keep the extra network login box around.

NDS is to this day a better network managment system than Active Directory despite being basically abandoned what, five years ago?

What I keep waiting to see from Novell is a linux based desktop solution given away for free... and a competativly priced server product (Novell on a linux core instead of dos? Yum) and network management system based around NDS.

The only thing that would hold them back then is the same thing that killed them in the first place - You have to have an NT domain in place to effectivly use Exchange (at least for larger installations) - Perhaps it's time to bring Groupwise back with a Thunderbird front end? What's the status of the calandar app in the Mozilla suite anyway?

Re:what makes vista special?

[JPriest]

All the agruements are the same as the ones for XP mostly. "Who would want to use that fisher price version of win2k?" I say to myself...