Posted on 03/23/2006 5:46:01 PM PST by Utah Girl
For Novell's chief marketing strategist, the news Wednesday couldn't have been better: Microsoft had once more postponed release of Windows Vista.
"Why, I feel bad for them," he quipped, holding up a copy of USA Today with a headline trumpeting, "Microsoft Delays New Windows" as the Salt Palace convention crowd of several thousand cheered.
Dragoon noted that the current test version of Vista had reportedly been found by reviewers to be short on "finesse, polish and general impressiveness" in its bid to replace Windows XP, which debuted in late 2001.
"I don't know if you guys knew that [Vista] was originally expected to be ready by end of 2004," Dragoon added. "The last time I checked, it is 2006."
Microsoft says its consumer version of Vista will be released in January. Corporate buyers who purchase volume licenses should be able to get the upgrade in November.
Novell's SUSE Linux 10, along with its family of desktop, communications, mobile and networking applications, is ready now, Dragoon said.
"And I can guarantee that what you see today [in the conference demonstration] will be impressive, will have polish and will give you hope and confidence that there actually is a legitimate choice," Dragoon said.
Even with its latest troubles rolling out the next generation of Windows, Microsoft continues to dominate the computer OS market with an 85 percent to 90 percent share. Novell's Linux suite, while critically acclaimed, still lags behind RedHat Inc.'s versions of the "open source," or freely distributed, OS.
Matt Friedemann, vice president of engineering, and Guy Linardi, senior products manager, said Novell programmers and open-source community contributors had labored more than a year to produce a family of new Linux products for the PC desktop.
Testing of the new software also involved study groups made up of ordinary users who were asked to perform typical tasks, such as browsing the Internet, sending e-mail, creating a document or using a Web cam.
Engineers monitored the groups, regularly reviewing, tweaking and re-testing products before they were deemed ready for release.
"Geeks are nice, but there are a lot of other 'non-geek' people in the world, and we wanted to reach them," Friedemann said.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
I know that. I used to work at Novell.
"You can then run Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop if the Linux equivalents don't meet your needs."
I got to play w/ a new Windows copy of Open Office the other day. If the Linux version is half as good then M$ Office has some SERIOUS competition.
Huh? Microsoft Office runs on Apple, and Sun Office runs on both *nix and Windows systems. And you can have *nix clients join MS Active Directory, it's simply LDAP itself. I don't know how you could think Novell is the only vendor with cross platform capability?
"Huh? Microsoft Office runs on Apple, and Sun Office runs on both *nix and Windows systems. And you can have *nix clients join MS Active Directory, it's simply LDAP itself. I don't know how you could think Novell is the only vendor with cross platform capability?"
I was comparing SERVER platforms... my bad.
AD stinks compared to eDir (I get to work with both). I haven't seen any built-in AD stuff that does near the management of *nix machines in AD, but it's been a while since I looked.
I just want to run my DNS server on something other than a Win2x server.....
I'll admit that's difficult if you're running active dir, we retired our BIND systems when A/D 2003 came out, and haven't really missed them. Some people prefer the *nix environment, buy they are a definite minority.
erm, ya, they need to get an application or two for this Linux thing. /s
Linux has a lot of applications. But for the ordinary home user? Ease of use? Did Novell get OEM licensing? Don't get me wrong, I'm an original Unix user and a certified Linux person. Novell may still find that niche, but their past record makes me kinda cynical.
Everybody's got the spreadsheet and word processor - I'm talking about mission-critical apps specific to my business, which don't even exist for the Mac, much less *nix platforms. They're certified for Win2k Pro and WinXP Pro, period. And those are two fine, stable platforms for our needs, with no hassles trying to track down obscure drivers or utilities.
For those with less stringent requirements, I'm all for Open Source, *nix etc. and I've been futzing with various OSes since I learned what Hollerith characters were. But like I tell the Macmoonies . . . . I'm not shopping for a new religion.
Only one thing though: I wonder what will be the hardware requirements for Novell Linux Desktop 2. If you load the full graphical interface it could be almost as big as Windows XP!
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
That's kind of a problem. Novell can be kind of quirky when it comes to technology. I remember arguing for years about their command line utilities (customers like it that way.) Look and feel wasn't Novell's strong suit, I hope it changes for SUSE.
My experience is these new Linux/open source fruits are the biggest zealots the industry has ever seen. Novell thought they could ride their "movement" into some profits, but what they forgot was most of the open sourcers don't like to ever actually pay for anything.
In the end, not much has changed, *nix continues to further fragment and cannibalize its own, an endless confusing mess that allows Microsoft to stumble to record profits every quarter.
Spot on comments.
Thank you my dear, hope you have a wonderful evening.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
My company will be eliminating all support for Novell in our next generation of servers - one less thing to worry about. :)
-vm
Why don't you two compare powerpoints? Besides who expected Redmond to deliver on-time?
Thanks for the information. I'm buying another computer in the near future and had planned to put Linux on it. I may give SUSE a whirl...There's a lot of things I really really like about unix and linux.
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