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

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...