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Is There Room for Xandros in the Server Market?
Robert writes to tell us CBROnline is reporting that almost two years after discussing the possibility, Xandros has finally named a date for their first Linux server product. From the article: "While there are plenty of Linux server distributions on the market, the market is undoubtedly dominated by Red Hat, Novell's SUSE Linux a distant second. In order to find a gap in the market with Xandros Server, due May 1, the company will have to differentiate it from the pack."
Looking att thees numbers it looks like novell isnt doing so well...
Whilst I wish Xandros a lot of luck in their venture, I think it is a mistake for them to move into the server market. I haven't used Xandros myself but I have known people that have, they have nothing but good things to say about their desktop environment, Xandros is the kinda company we need leading the way for the desktop market, they seems to have done a lot of what lindows (now linspire) promised, a high quality desktop platform with decent windows compatibility (thanks to crossover and wine).
They are doing so great in that market a risky move like this could undo a lot of that good work, they could end up eating it on the server market not being able to compete with the big boys.
Whilst the article mentions some cool stuff they are planning, if people want a windows like management console they are likely to stick to windows.
Regardless I wish them luck.
GeekServ Unix Consulting Services (http://www.geekserv.com)
I'm sure there probably is room for them but the thing that I always struggle with is the cost associated with running distro's such as Redhat or something from Novell... If you look at what you can expect to pay Redhat per year to keep your server up to date with updates it definately starts to get expensive...
I'm all for linux on corporate equipment that's why I've been running Debian for years, I have boxes in production that were installed years ago with Debian and have happily churned away without any trouble, and really have only had to be rebooted a few times to update the kernel due to security trouble.
I know I know people want support and need to have that warm fuzzy feeling but if you higher good help you should be able to support these boxes internally on your own.
Novell's other products are increasingly becoming Linux based. That should change the statistic. There is still a large installed base of Netware/Open Enterprise Server.
FYFA:
...
1Q06
$13m
"Linux platform products and other open source products"
Sure you can live with quarterly income of $13m, but what kind of a life would that be
I'd better say we need something new. Something that can run linux executables for backward compatibility but that is much cleaner and much more network-i/o minded than linux is right now. And it's own applications ofcourse should kick the %^*&$&# out of ms and linux counterparts.
Perhaps something that is designed for our shiny x86-64 boxes and not just something that was ported to it from an old flaky i386 ?
Sure a kernel rewrite from zero could do it, but would that even be what we want&need ?
If one thing is good for everything, it's really good for nothing. Right now linux reminds me of the hiunday getz, not a car, not a bicycle, driving conditions like the second, price like the first, ultimately good for neither.
But since right now there's nothing better available for a developer, linux is what i use.
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
For companies that don't the internal expertise to maintain their own distribution and relationship with the community, the issue is support. RedHat and SUSE are not litterally selling their distribution. They are selling entitlements to a collection of open source and closed packages that they are willing to support. There's room for Xandros if they create a competent help desk, patch management system, work with hardware vendors to get on supported lists, engineering team to make custom changes or write patches to send upstream, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember right now.
Every single distri added means one more to compete for the market, one more needed to agree to form a standard and one more voice to make sure that no single distri can go the MS way and force a "standard" down the other's throat.
And there certainly is a market. Being big doesn't mean jack if you're too big to support all your customers and satisfy them. Actually, being a small company can be a selling point for some companies.
Imagine a big corp, deciding to use the flavor of Linux from a smaller distri maker. They could, quite reasonably, expect to have certain tweaks put in to fit their needs. At least by far easier than they could expect it from Red Hat. That's the selling argument for small distri makers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have used Xandros since it came out,before actually, they bought Corel Linux. And has "out of the box" the best windows network integration. Even allows AD domain logins, not that other distros don't have this capability, just not straight out of the box.They also create a fake "C:\ Drive" environment so converting some people is easier.
What they are doing is creating a server that supplies updates and management to the rest of Xandros boxen on the network, and groupware. Why shouldn't they? So far nobody has integrated this functionally proper even in the windows environment.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
"Linux" covers a whole world of possibilities, from uclinux up to linspire. Saying it's bloated drags us back to the Negroponte article
yes.. definitely.. what is there now? redhat and suse ?
the chameleon and hat dont take much space. if u want to
optimize, we can put the chameleon inside the hat. There is
lotttttts of space for XANDROS.
Rock On.
fifteen jugglers, five believers
Those are financial numbers and not servercount numbers. With those few numbers it is absolutely not clear wether the conclusion is correct or not.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
That's because Novell has perfected the art of killing product lines. I'm not trolling, just look at Novell's history. Suse used to be filled with great people, and they still have some great people, but they are being managed by typical corporate minds and its a bad thing. The culture at Red Hat is much more fitting to open source development (just look at their corporate structure, and who they have running things, as an example one of their VPs was the original creator of the GNU C++ compiler). Novell coasted off of the successes of Suse and Ximian for too long.
Regards,
Steve
Server distros aren't driven by "market" conditions, rather the same OSS qualities that have made successes from other distros. Ask an incorrect question and you're unlikely to get a correct answer. The commercial distro version have lots of room. May the best distro win.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
It comes with a full groupware solution (they haven't announced which one but it's a commercial product) and a commercial backup solution. They also announced it's bundled with Helix Server which is cool if you want to get into streaming media.
Their site is still short on details and no screenshots but it gives a pretty high level view of the product. www.xandros.com. If you want to know what it looks like, just look at Microsoft Management Console (MMC).
So try on this "vision". You are a desktop company, so connect your desktops. What would really distinguish your company and provide "added-value" is to make a Xandros-Domain Controller by integrating Samba, a Directory Server (perhaps using the now open-source Redhat/Netscape DS), along with a slick admin gui. Provide support for an office running mixed Xandros and windows clients. It could be based on Linux, but it's linux-ness should be almost invisable and irrelavent.
Xandros is an awesome distro, and they release great products with top quality, compliments of Ming and his engineering team.
I have used Xandros Desktop since Desktop 1.0 and will be looking forward to implementing their server product.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Forget the glory of the Fortune 500-types. Focus on the real world of small shops stuck with an increasingly unwieldy MS Windows mish-mash of products that will become increasingly unsupportable. Offer a small business-focused desktop/server product mix that integrates well with the current MS Windows stuff and provides an opportunity to migrate to a Linux-predominant or Linux-only environment over time. You can make all you GUI admin tools proprietary (after all, all the admin _can_ be done with a text editor by the knowledgeable).
As far as I can tell they did find 2 niches.
1) A dedicated Real Media Server. There aren't good options on Linux because RedHat, Suse etc... aren't in bed with Real
2) Integration with Xandros desktop management tools.
The single biggest obstacle to Linux's success is the number of distros. Can you imagine Joe Sixpack going into a store (or going to a website) and saying, "Oh I know exactly what I want. I want Linux distro #136.5." There might be room for another one in the server market, but linux developer community needs to come up with a rational selection of distributions. Something like: embedded, home, server; with perhaps developer, business, and education distros as well. The acceptable number of distributions is directly proportional to the technological competence of the intended user.
Is There Room for Xandros in the Server Market?
No.
Next advertiseent/press-release, please.
Primarily a SuSE shop here, the HP and Oracle relationships with Novell as well as the boardroom recognition of the Novell brand were the determinants. Admittedly, it's easier to sell Novell to the board than RH, RedHat simply doesn't have old-school recognition like Novell does. To me it feels like RH applies far more pressure trying to extract money for access to updates. That said, technically, at least on headless servers, there's very little difference between them other than the admin tools (yast vs. redhat-config). I like yast -but- it does make it a lot harder to version config files. Back to the point, I'm certain that RH is currently bigger than Novell in the server market, but I think the margin falls somewhere between 4:1 and 3:1. I *never*, in North America, used to hear about SuSE on servers before the Novell buyout, but I have been hearing it more and more over the last few years. That said, it would be interesting to see server deployment numbers, not just revenue because given equal deployment numbers, RH would have much higher revenue than SuSE.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Linux may have a lot of distros, but that's inevitable because it's a free and open source product, not a single thing like Windows or OSX. People have tried making a "united linux" and it failed. From a business/enterprise point of view, there really are two choices for Linux, Redhat or Suse. I say more competition is required, not less! The hundreds of Linux you keep hearing about, well most are just hobbyist systems that will not make a difference to anyone but a few that require the features that that particular niche distro provides. Please stop saying Linux has too many distros... as it really makes no sense.
Meh.
Novell can't market anything. They're losing their existing customers faster than they're getting new Linux customers.
They could turn that around if they would support GroupWise 7.0 on Red Hat and Ubuntu. It already runs on SuSE (Novell's own distribution). There is no reason why GroupWise should not be THE email/calendaring server on Linux.
We're running NetWare 6.5 with GroupWise and ZENworks and the only reason we're still with Novell is because of all the documentation that our users have stored in GroupWise's document management system. There is intense pressure from management to dump Novell because it is seen as a dying company.
Meanwhile, I've moved our infrastructure to Ubuntu.
Actually, the Xandros Server acts as a Windows PDC so the Xandros Desktops or Windows desktops can authenticate against it. Samba is fully configured out of the box as you'd expect from Xandros. So, it's pretty much what you asked for. Linux without all that Linuxness in your face. Of course, you can still go mess with the config files or run Webmin if you want at the same time so it's still Linux.
They already have the Xandros Business Edition which provides a desktop environment that looks and feels much like a better-looking Windows 2003. Unlike Windows, Xandros is easy to install and maintain, and it doesn't come with all of the security flaws and virus vulnerabilities that Windows has. Xandros Business Edition also includes the full edition of CrossOver Office. That means that if there is a major Windows software package that you can't live without, chances are you will be able to install and run it on Xandros through CrossOver. Now with the introduction of Xandros Server, which will go hand-in-hand with their business desktop distro, they are ready to eliminate Windows from almost any corporate environment. More power to them!
Meh.
1. Can it be certified to run Oracle (like RedHat)?
2. Can it be certified to run DB/2 (like Ubuntu)?
http://www.oneluckyboy.com/
At this moment there seems to be plenty of room for various distributions on the market. The only thing they have to think of is keeping eachother standards compliant and not wander off too far from the rest. A split like the one in Unix land is not in any Linux vendors interest and such vendor will quickly find themselves obsolete and marginalized.
HTTP/1.1 400
Something that can run linux executables for backward compatibility ... and it's own applications ofcourse should kick the %^*&$&# out of ms and linux counterparts.
That bit sounds a lot like OS-X to me. Personally I want Haiku to really pick up, or s similar project created for OS/2, I really liked both of those systems.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
What would they bring to the table? What we they cost. We they stay around long term?
What my server distro needs: 1) strong community support 2) strong security, automatic patch management 3) long term stability - three years minimum of patch support 4) a workable Samba package with ldap integrated from the package install 5) a workable, virtual domain capable, with easy administration, IMAP, webmail, ldap, and etc, email package with packaged *version* updates to at least clam for virus protection.
These are the server capabilities I look for when I roll out a remote office. Once these servers are setup, they are mostly ignored for years. I want to install and setup automatic patching and trust the distro to not break and stay secure.
The closest I can come to that now is with Redhat Enterprise or CentOS. To get the clam updates I have to add Dag Wieers' apt/yum repository. The packaged email and LDAP support doesn't meet the easily to setup or admin stipulation. Finally Redhat is too expensive and CentOS community support people are liable to try to run the life of one of my customers who accidentally asks them for help.
My hope is that Debian or maybe Ubuntu eventually fills this niche.
The only distro worth using is Slackware. All pay homage to the Slackware gods.
Since when is Solaris 10 Linux?
Um, ok I'll take this one:
NO.
Ok thanks everybody that's it for today, let's hit the streets and be careful out there.
God this site is still is worthless as it ever was back in the day.
So try on this "vision". You are a desktop company, so connect your desktops. What would really distinguish your company and provide "added-value" is to make a Xandros-Domain Controller by integrating Samba, a Directory Server (perhaps using the now open-source Redhat/Netscape DS), along with a slick admin gui. Provide support for an office running mixed Xandros and windows clients. It could be based on Linux, but it's linux-ness should be almost invisable and irrelavent. Thats similiar to what I'm trying to setup on my home network... being a programmer and not a network admin-type this is proving to be a little painful (I'm trying to use samba on a debian machine as a PDC). Ultimately I want to be able to connect a windows xp pro, windows 2000(on vmware on the xp machine) and then a few other machines (possibly solaris 10, a BSD and if I suddenly get rich an OS X machine). I'm wondering if a different linux distro would be easier to setup as a pdc?
Well, can't say about this for everyone, but at my company (predominantly windows for the back end) we are retiring our single Redhat server (ES 3.0) and putting up 3 Novell/SuSE (SLES 9) servers. I found SuSe to be superior to Redhat in many ways. For one, RH ES 3.0 had a nasty habit of having root's profile become corrupted. No other user had this issue. While the machine was very stable otherwise, I found SuSE better in many many ways. The part about not being under the gun for updates was a big sell for us.
It's pretty clear they aren't going after the "traditional" UNIX server market... that would be suicide.
I'm a bilingual (Windows and *nix) small business consultant, and I would love to see a really easy Linux server for very small companies. I'm really big on long-term maintainability, and while I've got no problem editing config files, my customers do, and frankly there aren't alot of Linux fluent consultants serving very small companies either. So I've been very hesitant to roll our Linux-based servers because I don't want to leave them totally high and dry should we stop working together.
I've looked at what's out there today with webmin and such, and it just is not something you could turn your average windows-educated sysadmin loose on and know that they'd be able to add users and new desktops, create shares, etc... If Xandros can put something together that has a consistent, logical config UI for non-linux users and package it with great maintenance and support, it would be very welcome. I just hope the price is right... it's got to be cheaper than windows SBS 2003 OEM to compete.
-R
Wouldn't they just be lost in the pack with a general purpose server? Being certified for Oracle or DB2 is already done by others. They should instead pick their own niche and run with it. From the other comments here, it looks like they are choosing some sort of media streaming niche. I'm not sure how many offices *really* need one of those for business. I think they should go with a custom PDC/Directory Server/Single-Sign-On niche, as there is real need in every office for that without the extortionate cost of the MS-AD Client Access Licenses. Such a move would build on their desktop integration expertise.
I had high hopes for Novell's Open Enterprise Server in this area by combining Suse, Novell eDirectory (NDS), and ZenWorks, but their per user pricing model does not seem to offer anything over MS CALs, which is probably why they are failing.
It should be a plug'n'play, probably apples.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
if we ever get down to several distros, MS will be able to target those distros quite easy. To be honest, the multi headed beast that MS drew up is about right. Kill one head and 2 more pop up. So I really can understand why ppl like the GP wants it simplified.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There aren't good options on Linux because RedHat, Suse etc... aren't in bed with Real
Huh. That's weird. I wonder what all these are for then. Looks like I (or anyone else) can go get binaries for the Helix DNA Server v10 for:
AIX 4.3/5.x on PowerPC
FreeBSD 5.x on IA32
HP/UX 11.0 on HP-PA
Linux on IA32
NetBSD 1.6 on IA32
OpenBSD 3.3 on IA32
Tru64 5.1 on Alpha
Solaris 8/9 on UltraSPARC
Windows on IA32
And v11 for
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 on IA32
Linux 2.6 on IA32
Solaris 9/10 on UltraSPARC
Windows Server 2003 on IA32
You can find more info on the project page.
Also, because a distro includes packages from another company doesn't indicate any kind of partnership at all. Case in point: Xandros desktop 1 where Xandros took the Real Player Linux alpha, fixed it and made it the default media player for XD. It wasn't till XD 3 was in development before they actually had any kind of contect from Real.
R(k)
Is There Room for Xandros in the Server Market?
no
All due respect, but it's not all there. I used Xandros a lot last year in an effort to wean myself off Windows... before I became a switcher when the Mac Mini came out.
Xandros is better than most of the other linux desktop distros out there, especially when it comes to Windows integration. Keep in mind, that's not saying much at all. I found myself using VMWare running Windows more than actually using the the host operating system. Despite its many strengths, Xandros isn't a great substitute for Windows. Many of the tools that I used in Windows were for the most part, more inconvenient to use on Xandros than in Windows.
I'm a geek with a higher tolerance for inconvenience than the average user, but at some point, I realized that I could spend less time figuring out the idiosyncracies of Xandros then just using the version of Windows that came with my computer.
For average users, I'm not sure that Xandros Business Edition is that great an alternative. I can appreciate the need to reduce licensing costs, but if you're looking for a Windows server clone, you should just stick to Windows. If you're specifically looking for a robust Linux server platform, go with a major vendor like Red Hat. At least you know they'll be around for a while.
If you're willing to wait, and spend a little more on hardware, wait until Apple releases OS X server for x86. IMHO, it's unlikely that Xandros server product would ever get more market share than OS X server anyways. One thing is for sure, Xandros will never be as polished as OS X.
Set up one box with a good amout of ram, at least 1Gig, 2 preferably. Use 2 NICs and at least 2 drives in a RAID1 mirror (software is ok, hardware raid is better).
Put something solid on that like CentOS or Debian stable.
Connect eth0 on your LAN and eth1 on your WAN.
Install the free vmware server on that box and run ipcop with cop+(squid&dansgaurdian) in a VM. Have only the ipcop WAN virtual NIC using the host's bridged eth1 and its LAN side using bridged eth0. The host can unbind TCP/IP from eth1 or just have it on something like 127.0.0.2 and no gateway. That gives you transparent filtering, firewalling, caching, intrusion detection, etc.
Install asterisk@home in another VM with just one virtual NIC bound to bridged eth0. That gives you a VOIP server.
If your ISP allows incoming POP/IMAP/SMTP ports, you can easily set up something like qmailtoaster for secure email/webmail with spamfiltering/virus scanning. It can be done on the host or in a VM, but I'd do it in a VM(assuming you have the RAM) because its really easy to back up that way. You can just shut the VM down and tar.gz up the directory containing the VM files. Put the tar.gz in a samba/NFS share and burn it off to DVD.
That takes care of most of what you want, the rest can be pretty much pluggable VMs(appliciances) that are likely already created by someone. You can also run things like LAMP apps and samba on your host.
Also, if none of the stuff your using needs windows servers, you could try out Xen which is free and open source virtualization from redhat/fedora.
Is there enough room for Xandros? Well, why would they even go in the server market? From my understanding and experience, Xandros is is a user friendly linux os for newbies and personal use at home. What nitch will it fill? Or more to the point, what need is there for it as a server?
Agreed.
We are running a couple datacenters and whenever we use Linux, we try to do SuSE Pro whenever we can - it is de facto standard now.
I myself recently stumbled across a mind boggling issue with the newest RH ES -- when installing on a fairly typical IBM x346 it failed to install LILO complaining that kernel (RH stock kernel at that!) was too large, but silently finished install leaving a machine in an unbootable state!
The only place we've RH left now is where we have Oracle DB, but we've asked to investigate our DBAs on whether they wouldn't mind running it on SLES.
Have you ever looked at Plan 9? (Its official page is here, but frankly the Wikipedia article is better.)
I think it was basically what you are envisioning -- a ground-up reconstruction of UNIX, with an emphasis on networking and the distributed multiuser environment, developed and backed by a large corporation with deep pockets and substantial R&D resources. It doesn't have a Linux binary compatibility layer, although it seems like you could probably build one if you really wanted to and were running it on a standard x86 architecture. From what I've read, the majority of Plan 9 installations were on big server iron, so I don't think such a thing was made.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
roots profile becoming corrupted?
sounds like user error to me.
I looked around, and most of the popular linux server platforms are non-free. If the Xandros server platform is free, that would give it a definite edge against its competition. However, considering that the only free platform Xandros offers has limitations that try to force you to buy the non-free version, this seems unlikely.
This is not a sig. This is a llama-duck. Quack.
Yea there's a market, albeit small. I can see small companies with only a handful of computers using it. I'm thinking of real estate offices, optical shops and so on. Not Big Name Insurance company with 70,000 computers to serve to.
Nitix is close, but the business model is wrong. Pricing was as much or more than MS SBS 2003 OEM at the number of clients I typically deal with. They also only sell through VARs which compete with me. I have no interest in being a VAR myself, but they have no low-margin resellers I can recommend to my clients.
I'll take a look at the other one you mention.
-R
considering I am the only one who logs in as root and I have done nothing to it besides....su to root and on occasion launch X, I should have no reason to think that the profile (including the X session files) become corrupt. This is all on an IBM 1U box that otherwise runs fine. Luckily my regular user and root's profile are strikingly similar. I can just rewrite the files that become corrupted faster than going to a backup tape. After the third time, I kept a backup of the files tar'd up in a safe place just in case.