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Netware was huge, for its day. It beat back Microsoft more successfully than anyone else managed in the 80s and 90s. Eventually, they came up with a stellar ap

Netware was huge, for its day. It beat back Microsoft more successfully than anyone else managed in the 80s and 90s. Eventually, they came up with a stellar app OS: Suse. But they never got the business side pointed straight. In the end, I would say Microsoft won for the strangest reason of all. They gave their desktop OS and their server OS the same name. And even though everyone that mattered knew they weren't the same, it somehow mattered that the desktop OS had such large market share. Because Netware failed to catch the TCP/IP wave, but Suse caught it. But Windows servers could run Windows apps and Linux could not. And Novell never figured out to go all-in on Linux as an app server. The business side never made the leap. Well, at least not in time.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
> go all-in on Linux as an app server I don’t think it was clear back then that Linux was going to be the winner it is today.
- supportlocal4h 4y ago
  Agreed. But it was pretty clear that the world needed more than File Servers and Print Servers. NLMs weren't a clear path forward, either. We needed app servers. Desktops and workstations ran apps. Servers ran... well, servers. Windows could run both and so could Unix. Netware? Not really. Of course that was a junior high understanding of software. But such odd views mattered. You could run Groupwise email or Oracle on Netware, but it felt off. You could write a Perl script and have it run in Apache and talk to sendmail on Linux. You could run a VisualBasic app on Windows and have it talk to Sybase and cc:Mail. Maybe that VB app ran on a client, but the distinction between a client and a server could get blurry. Client-server apps became n-tier apps. Windows could do that. Netware really couldn't. Unix could do it amazingly. And not just Linux. Redhat had this vision. Suse had it pre-Novell. Some people at Novell had it. But corporate vision is a challenge. And Netware was a champion. It is hard for humans to throw away the horse that made you a king and jump onto some other horse. Especially if you have to convince your customers to stay in your saddle. It wasn't easy for Microsoft either. There was that whole OS/2 thing and LanManager and all kinds of awkward. The path forward was super murky for everyone in 1992. And Microsoft failed again and again against Netware. But Netware really lost to BSDs and Linux as an app server. And *nix eventually lost to Windows as a directory server. By the time Novell got around to hosting their best-in-class directory server on a capable app server, it was too late. AD got good enough before anybody else put something as good as NDS on Unix. And of course, Windows clients had built in support that nobody outside was ever going to match as far as GPO capabilities. All that said, history isn't over. The world is still waiting for a better client app server than Windows or Android. Or at least a better ecosystem. It isn't going to come from Redhat. It hasn't come from Google yet. There is room for a client OS with great Directory integration to take over enterprise computing. It won't be easy, but the right vision could pair with the right marketing to create a new winner. Funny enough, the biggest obstacle to that would be replacing AD.
  - lproven 4y ago
    Netware 3 and later loaded from DOS. It couldn't boot itself; it started by running an EXE file from DOS. (Netware 2.x was the last version that could cold-boot itself from hard disk.) But it didn't have to run on DOS. It later supported loading on OS/2 as well. Then your Netware server was a process running under a multitasking OS. Result, non-dedicated Netware server that could run server apps right alongside Netware with its famed performance, quite a few years before the first PC hypervisor was implemented. Now this is easy; in the 1990s it was next to impossible. But neither IBM nor Novell saw this as the potential killer feature it could have been. If IBM had bought Novell (instead of Red Hat), or Novell had licensed a cut-down OS/2 and bundled it with Netware as the host OS... :shrug: Instead, it bolted a new filesystem onto Netware, added an X11 server, added Java, and tried to piecemeal turn Netware into a Unix-a-like non-dedicated server OS... which turned it into a bit of a bloated mess, and destroyed Netware's lean, mean elegance. https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/07/16/netware_4_anniversary/ https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/07/16/netware_4_anniv...
randombits0 4y ago
>They gave their desktop OS and their server OS the same name. And even though everyone that mattered knew they weren't the same, Technically? They were the same. A regedit or two and your NT Workstation is now NT Server.
- saratogacx 4y ago
  I think the difference is more Windows 3.x and 9x versions that many were more familiar with. When your computer runs "windows", and your workstation runs "windows", why not also have your servers run "windows.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago

> go all-in on Linux as an app server I don’t think it was clear back then that Linux was going to be the winner it is today.

supportlocal4h 4y ago
Agreed. But it was pretty clear that the world needed more than File Servers and Print Servers. NLMs weren't a clear path forward, either. We needed app servers. Desktops and workstations ran apps. Servers ran... well, servers. Windows could run both and so could Unix. Netware? Not really. Of course that was a junior high understanding of software. But such odd views mattered. You could run Groupwise email or Oracle on Netware, but it felt off. You could write a Perl script and have it run in Apache and talk to sendmail on Linux. You could run a VisualBasic app on Windows and have it talk to Sybase and cc:Mail. Maybe that VB app ran on a client, but the distinction between a client and a server could get blurry. Client-server apps became n-tier apps. Windows could do that. Netware really couldn't. Unix could do it amazingly. And not just Linux. Redhat had this vision. Suse had it pre-Novell. Some people at Novell had it. But corporate vision is a challenge. And Netware was a champion. It is hard for humans to throw away the horse that made you a king and jump onto some other horse. Especially if you have to convince your customers to stay in your saddle. It wasn't easy for Microsoft either. There was that whole OS/2 thing and LanManager and all kinds of awkward. The path forward was super murky for everyone in 1992. And Microsoft failed again and again against Netware. But Netware really lost to BSDs and Linux as an app server. And *nix eventually lost to Windows as a directory server. By the time Novell got around to hosting their best-in-class directory server on a capable app server, it was too late. AD got good enough before anybody else put something as good as NDS on Unix. And of course, Windows clients had built in support that nobody outside was ever going to match as far as GPO capabilities. All that said, history isn't over. The world is still waiting for a better client app server than Windows or Android. Or at least a better ecosystem. It isn't going to come from Redhat. It hasn't come from Google yet. There is room for a client OS with great Directory integration to take over enterprise computing. It won't be easy, but the right vision could pair with the right marketing to create a new winner. Funny enough, the biggest obstacle to that would be replacing AD.
- lproven 4y ago
  Netware 3 and later loaded from DOS. It couldn't boot itself; it started by running an EXE file from DOS. (Netware 2.x was the last version that could cold-boot itself from hard disk.) But it didn't have to run on DOS. It later supported loading on OS/2 as well. Then your Netware server was a process running under a multitasking OS. Result, non-dedicated Netware server that could run server apps right alongside Netware with its famed performance, quite a few years before the first PC hypervisor was implemented. Now this is easy; in the 1990s it was next to impossible. But neither IBM nor Novell saw this as the potential killer feature it could have been. If IBM had bought Novell (instead of Red Hat), or Novell had licensed a cut-down OS/2 and bundled it with Netware as the host OS... :shrug: Instead, it bolted a new filesystem onto Netware, added an X11 server, added Java, and tried to piecemeal turn Netware into a Unix-a-like non-dedicated server OS... which turned it into a bit of a bloated mess, and destroyed Netware's lean, mean elegance. https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/07/16/netware_4_anniversary/ https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/07/16/netware_4_anniv...

randombits0 4y ago

>They gave their desktop OS and their server OS the same name. And even though everyone that mattered knew they weren't the same, Technically? They were the same. A regedit or two and your NT Workstation is now NT Server.

saratogacx 4y ago
I think the difference is more Windows 3.x and 9x versions that many were more familiar with. When your computer runs "windows", and your workstation runs "windows", why not also have your servers run "windows.