Novell software 4 or 5

[Jonathan Hutchins]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dustin Decker" <dustind at moon-lite.com>

> Besides - if it ain't broke, why would you need to fix it?

> As for calling those who run Novell (spelled with two L's by the way)
> unhealthy... I guess that's relative, but I'd argue you point for point.
> Bottom line, there is a question that must ALWAYS be asked when
> implementing a system... any system.  "What do you expect it to do?"  If
> the Novell folks ask themselves this question, the answer is the same
> today as it was last week/month/year, then why would you expect them to
> upgrade?  Just because they can?

One word answer: reliability.

Someone said that Novell uses the MS TCP/IP stack - I know they can, but
they also like to use their own proprietary version (which they have always
have insisted, incorrectly, adheres more closely to open standards).  Their
stack is not 100% compatible with either MS or *NIX TCP/IP, which is one of
the reasons they're such a pain to deal with .

Or we could, of course, use IPX.  Next slide please.  We'll wait for the
retching to quiet down.

A company that clung to Novell quite simply did not do a reasonable analysis
of how quickly they should amortize their investment in it.  They may have
invested late, swayed by anti-Microsoft zealots, and have been reluctant to
move to NT at first, but by now they are clinging to old technology that
should have been replaced.  They are short sightedly looking at the
amortization in the wrong time scale, and refusing to replace capital
investments that are holding back productivity.  They do not have a
realistic view of their return on investment, from which you can conclude
that they're not being well run.  The only good thing about this is that
they can skip right over Microsoft and go directly to Linux.

I'll say it again: In every environment where I have removed the Novell
clients from workstations, there was a dramatic improvement in reliability
and performance.  Every network that I eliminated IPX traffic from showed
noticeable improvements in performance.  As for servers, I had problems with
Novell servers just as I did with NT, they weren't inherently more reliable.
In new installations, we usually spent less time troubleshooting an NT
server than we did a new Novell server, but that may have been subjective.
Admittedly, problems with Novell servers didn't tend to be trivial, obvious
things, whereas NT was frequently just dumb mistakes.

With Free software out there that will do anything you can do with a Novell
system, there's no reason to perpetuate errors of the past.  If you have a
problem with Novell, or a need that could be filled by Novell, use Linux
instead.