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I thought then and still say that had Novell ported IPX/SPX to Unix[0] (they did own Unix in the 90s), Microsoft would never have been able to make them irrelev
by nobody9999 4y ago
I thought then and still say that had Novell ported IPX/SPX to Unix[0] (they did own Unix in the 90s), Microsoft would never have been able to make them irrelevant.
Because the biggest reason Netware lost was the inability to develop software on the platform.
This severely limited the value of Netware as a server operating system, as developers (for the most part) prefer to develop on the the platform (cross-compiling for other flavors of *nix doesn't count) for which they're developing software.
What's more, IIUC, the development tools for Netware were just awful. Which additionally limited the number of developers working on Netware-related applications.
And even those few folks mostly abandoned it as NT gained popularity as a server and a development platform. Had there been a robust user/development environment (like Unix), that likely wouldn't have happened.
[0] I am aware that Netware was mostly written in x86 assembler, but porting IPX/SPX and a few other bits and bobs would have allowed Novell to migrate to a Unix platform without having to rewrite the entire OS.
- nradov 4y agoNovell actually did port NetWare networking services to Unix in 2005 but by that point it was too late.
- opless 4y agoIt was available for a handful of Unix OS in the mid 90s There was also a FOSS NetWare server for Linux at the same time too
- lproven 4y agoIt was called MARSNWE, if anyone is curious. A source, ironically from Novell docs. https://www.novell.com/documentation/suse91/suselinux-adminguide/html/ch17s03.html https://www.novell.com/documentation/suse91/suselinux-adming... It only emulated Netware 2/3, not the later NDS versions.
- timbit42 4y agoWhat would be the benefit of porting IPX/SPX to Unix? Netware already ran on TCP/IP.
- nobody9999 4y ago>What would be the benefit of porting IPX/SPX to Unix? Netware already ran on TCP/IP. Uhh...The millions of clients who didn't have IP stacks? I'd note that Novell didn't include an IP stack in Netware until 1996[0]. By then they'd already lost to Microsoft. And they'd purchased Unix more than three years earlier, but didn't port Netware to Unix at all. Rather it was Netware on Linux, and wasn't released until 2005 -- when Netware was already irrelevant. Had they migrated to Unix in the 1993-1994 time frame they would have eaten Microsoft's lunch. But they didn't. And so they lost. And they are gone. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWare#NetWare_4.x https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWare#NetWare_4.x
- spookthesunset 4y agoI remember back when doing LAN parties and stuff IPX/SPX for some reason always seemed to work better for games.