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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."
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.
People want support for more than warm fuzzies... you *boss* wants support so that when you go under a bus he has some chance of keeping his systems up and running when the new guy turns up.
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.
"Linux" covers a whole world of possibilities, from uclinux up to linspire. Saying it's bloated drags us back to the Negroponte article
The addition of all these new distro's is a TERRIBLE thing. Every single distro does its own thing and there is no standardization whatsoever. It's terrible. People complained and mocked Microsoft about Windows Vista because it will have 7 different releases. I ask those people this, how many different distributions of Linux are there? Which one do you think consumers would have a harder time understanding?
As a desktop distro, Xandros isn't bad. Not great either. Other distros have gotten a lot more attention than Xandros or Linspire in the past 18 months, especially Ubuntu.
As a server distro, however, I would be looking at how well funded the company is. Many companies want to keep a server operational for five years, maybe more. If I'm going to go with Linux, I'm going to choose a reasonably well funded company like Red Hat, or I'm going to go totally free.
I'd also be concerned about support. I used to check out their forums, and the most informative, knowledgeable guy was also one of the rudest characters out there... He didn't work for Xandros, but still... Xandros is a for-pay product, so your customers will have better expectations.
I'm not quite convinced that Xandros will have the longevity businesses need in the server marketplace.
Now, with OSX Server on the way on Intel, I'd rather spend a few extra bucks on an XServe (granted, there is no such thing as an Intel XServe or OSX Server for x86 today) than on a Xandros server.
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.
With Windows on the other hand, Microsoft intentionally cripples the lesser versions of Windows. Look at XP Home versus XP Pro, and how Microsoft intentionally crippled out of Home features that were in Pro. For example, XP Pro has advanced control over user permissions--the capability is on Home too, but MS crippled it out.
With Linux distros, the maintainers are adding as much functionality as they can. With Windows versions, MS figures out what functions it can remove, in order to goad users into spending more $$.
Penny - plain text accounting
1. Can it be certified to run Oracle (like RedHat)?
2. Can it be certified to run DB/2 (like Ubuntu)?
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.