Novell NetWare: The King Returns from the Dead (2001)

Re:Novell NetWare: The King Returns from the Dead (2001) by torh on Monday December 26, 2022 @05:48PM (#34142778)

I remember Novells NDS (directory service) to be miles head of Microsoft AD back in Windows 2000, and even many years after. But AD was included "for free" in Windows, and the rest is history...

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Re:Novell NetWare: The King Returns from the Dead (2001) by mc32 on Monday December 26, 2022 @06:40PM (#34143178)

Apparently there were places that Leo mete are around for printer server services as it apparently handles printer queues better, so they said.

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Re:Novell NetWare: The King Returns from the Dead (2001) by Scramblejams on Monday December 26, 2022 @09:08PM (#34144189)

Having trouble parsing this. Can you please restate?

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Re:Novell NetWare: The King Returns from the Dead (2001) by mc32 on Monday December 26, 2022 @09:46PM (#34144440)

Autocorrection mangled it.

Some places kept them around as print servers… (after NT displaced them as directory servers)

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Re:Novell NetWare: The King Returns from the Dead (2001) by Neil44 on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @05:16AM (#34147329)

It’s hard to beat free. And of course MS is now trying to kill on prem AD in favour of subscription based AAD.

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Re:Novell NetWare: The King Returns from the Dead (2001) by lproven on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @09:09AM (#34161091)

> But AD was included "for free" in Windows, and the rest is history...

I don't think that's a valid point.

NDS was included for free in all versions of Netware from 4.0 onwards. The Windows client for Netware was free, and Netware came with the Windows management tools and so on.

I upgraded one company's network with a fleet of new workstations in about 1999. A few previous consultants told them it was impossible because they'd lost the installation media for the network client. Back then, it was new, but they didn't know you could just... download the client from Novell's website.

So I did, and switched out a fleet of 16-bit Windows boxes for NT 4 clients and the official Novell client. No CD drives: just bootstrap NT install with a DOS floppy, fetch the installation files from the server. Saved enough cost to pay for a few extra workstations.

It wasn't about price. The 2 killer factors of NT 4 Server displacing Netware 4 were:

* Ease of use: you didn't need to know what you were doing with NT. It's Windows. Click around, click "Next" and "OK" enough, you can get it going.

* Netware servers were effectively dedicated to file and print. There were a few server apps but many of them destroyed Netware's famed stability. NT 4 Server is just Windows and you can run anything you like on the server, while it's still being a server.

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