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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."
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.
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
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?
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
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.
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
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)?
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.
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