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Is There Room for Xandros in the Server Market?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the new-kid-on-the-block dept.

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."

7 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Suse is a distant second, but ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  2. Re:Is there room? by Numen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. It's about Support by xzvf · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:The more, the merrier by gexen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

  5. They Should Concentrate on a PDC and kill the CALs by HighOrbit · · Score: 4, Insightful
    From TFA
    Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos. "The Xandros Server platform was designed to map that vision of how modern businesses really work. Our platform connects communities of users, services, and IT architectures, whether they are local or dispersed. It offers a new, user-centric operating philosophy that has enabled the design of powerful features and protocols such as community management, task workflow automation, and centralized remote administration."
    Tsk Tsk, Mr. Typaldos. Please ditch the PHB-gibberish and speak English. Xandros is a desktop company, so you should "leverage" that strength. If you make a general purpose linux server, then it will either 1) be a jack of all trades but master of none, or 2)be lost in the crowd of general purpose linux servers.

    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.

  6. Re:The more, the merrier by massysett · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Big difference: with every Linux distro, every user gets the very best that the particular distro has to offer. There is no crippled version. At worst, a distro might have one version that doesn't have some proprietary packages, like OpenSUSE versus regular SUSE.

    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
  7. Yes iff the following questions are answered by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1. Can it be certified to run Oracle (like RedHat)?
    2. Can it be certified to run DB/2 (like Ubuntu)?