"On the other hand, the Linux server stuff rocks. And, what end user cares what is going on in the server room, so long as it works well?"
I think you have hit the nail on the head. Microsoft owns the desktop and will probably continue to do so for the forseeable future. The server room is the Linux market.
I work at a large University with about 20,000 PCs and a ton of servers. The web stuff is on Linux and Unix servers. The Oracle databases are the same.
Almost every desktop is either WinXP or Win2K. The office networks are running on Windows and Exchange Server is becoming more common every day. The scheduling, sharing, storage and email functions of Exchange Server and Outlook are starting to become the norm in every office. Our staff is utterly dependent on Exchange Server. That pretty much guarantees Windows Server will survive for the foreseeable future.
I see Linux killing Unix, but not Windows.
Microsoft is arrogant, but there is a big difference between MS and Novell. MS owns the desktop market. Novell didn't. Novell had a niche that most users didn't see or understand. They didn't notice the difference when it was replaced. If you do away with MS Server and Exchange Server, the people in my office will scream bloody murder.
Personally, I refuse to use Outlook or Exchange Server. I've never had a virus and I don't plan to get one. I won't even open shared files sent to me by the Director. The staff used to make fun of me, but they all had to reformat their disks and reinstall everything over Christmas break. The Director sent them all a nasty trojan and they opened it. I've been having a month-long gloat-a-thon about it.
NDS didn't come into it's own until eDir, and by then it was too late. Novell was a terrible marketing company, and a terrible OS company. Novell didn't discover SMP until version 5.1, and didn't think multithreading was cool until 5.5 or so. Hell, they didn't realize this whole TCP/IP thing was going to take off until '99 or so.
Not to mention their QA problems with patches and service packs. It wasn't unusual to get a patch a day for certain modules. As a matter of fact, we had a Novell developer sitting in a cube coding fixes for awhile.
So, Novell decides to get out of the NetWare OS business and become a directory company. Smart move. The only platform eDir actually WORKED on was Solaris. Dumb move.
Now, Novell is reshaping itself as a Linux company. Too late.