Talk:Novell NetWare

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[edit] NDS as an strategic mistake?

This part makes no sense. NDS was a great, easy to use tool. I've worked with a lot of NetWare instalations, and people complain about a lot of things, but not NDS. It was a painless upgrade from bindery, and much more useful. Much better than NT Domains. I'm removing this part190.10.22.214 21:30, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

IIRC NDS was the very best thing Novell has ever made. And it still is, now called eDirectory, abbrev. eDir. Very scalabe and reliable. IMHO still today much more robust and scalable product related with AD or the Domain model. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.63.70.206 (talk) 09:04, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] technical decline reasons too verbose

the section on the technical reasons for NetWare's decline is too lengthy, and too pedantic. There are numerous technical reasons which could be advanced for the rise and fall of any product. You don't need to mention them all. Maybe some people thought "SYS" was confusing as a default mapped drive - maybe, but who cares? It's too trivial. That section should be shortened, and the point about the difficulty of drives being resized cut out altogether. This article is not the place to go into such details. 210.48.84.234 06:31, 24 April 2007 (UTC)retroguy


[edit] Last statement has no corroboration

The closing statement in this article makes a conclusion and has an almost accusatory tone, yet there are no supporting references. I have added a peer review request regarding this.

[edit] Peer review tag removed

The offending statement was removed some time ago.

[edit] NetWare beyond 6.x

As I recall, shortly after Novell's acquisition of Ximian and SuSE, they announced on their web site that 6.x would be the last version of NetWare. No proof, but can anyone corroborate this? -- Enigmatick 22:50, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TCP/IP and NetWare v4.x

NetWare v4.x, released in 1995, does not support TCP/IP for NCP communications. It does support TCP/IP for services such as FTP, LPR/LPD and the NetWare HTTPD webserver. Novell created NetWare/IP, called NWIP, which could encapsulate IPX into TCP/IP packets and provided a bridge from IPX to TCP/IP for clients. NetWare v4.x is an obsolete and elderly version of NetWare, and was EOLed in 2000. The current product is OES-NetWare.

[edit] Novell and beyond NetWare v6.x

Novell has stated that NetWare v6.5 is end-of-the-line for "traditional" NetWare. The NetWare product line has been succeeded by Open Enterprise Server, which offers the same services atop either a NetWare or a Linux kernel.

Novell has stated that only the Linux kernel would be enhanced and developed and that NetWare "upgrades" are a move to Linux, not newer versions of NetWare. For example, the following will only run on the Linux kernel of OES and will never run on the NetWare kernel:

- Multiple instances ("virtual directories") of eDirectory v8.8
- iFolder 3.x
- JVM 1.5x and above
- 64-bit support
- Future "versions" of NetWare will run as a "virtual machine" on XEN on Linux

[edit] Rearrange the page?

How about describing the present product first, and the history later?

I agree. I don't think it's good to start the history section with the decline of NetWare, either. It should be rearranged chronologically. Rhobite 00:40, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Have a look back to before 23 Nov. Up to then it was setup fine. All this decline stuff went in then - it's probably valid enough in some ways - but most certainly should be down the bottom - ie in chrono order (imho)Snori 06:18, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Didn't realize it was a new addition.. that explains the lack of talk. I think it is valid, but there are some speculative parts of it. I toned it down a little, but it still suggests that NetWare was technically superior to LAN Manager / NT and the only reason for NetWare's decline was Microsoft's marketing. Rhobite 22:46, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I plan to go forward with the re-org suggestions, as well as some material expansion regarding strategic decisions that led to NetWare's decline (not just chalking it up to Microsoft's "superior" marketing) -- unless someone objects within the next few days. EJSawyer 05:46, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Error in Early Years section

In the Early Years section, there is this comment: "Prior to the 80286 CPU, servers were based on either the Intel 8086/8088 or Motorola 68000 8-bit processors that were limited to 640k RAM and lacked pre-emptive multi-tasking". The 68000 is neither 8-bit, nor limited to 640kb ram. Don't want to edit myself, as unsure if this error is due to confusion between the 68000 and the 6800 or if someone's assumed the attributes of the 8086/8088 apply to the 68k too.

Also, being pedantic, the 8086/8088 aren't limited to 640kb of RAM, rather the original IBM PC architecture imposed this limit.

Davidprior 21:28, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SuperNOS/Gemini

Does anyone have access/links to articles regarding the origins of SuperNOS/Gemini? Specifically, during the period around 1992-1993, even prior to the Unix deal, there was a lot of noise from Novell about moving NetWare's services to a stable app server kernel. I remember this clearly because the kernel that was being discussed was the first time I'd ever heard the name "Linux" (it's truly ironic that that failed decision has now come full circle...) I want to add some info about this, but without citations it's going get serious scrutiny/criticism. EJSawyer 05:53, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Difficulties In Developing for Netware

Nothing is said about the lack of compilers, materials and support for developing for the Netware platform. It has improved greatly but was an extremely closed group. Administrators were prisoner to the few apps available from 3rd parties.

[edit] Explanation of Acronyms

"Novell servers could be assembled using any brand system with an Intel 80286 or higher CPU, any MFM, RLL, ESDI, or SCSI hard drive and any 8-bit or 16-bit network adapter, subject to availability of suitable drivers."

Great, but what is MFM, RLL, and ESDI??? Now I googled them all and found out, but us younger folks have no idea what these mean without further explanation. Perhaps they should be explained or at least be given a link to follow. I would even say you could change this to avoid using these terms at all. I won't change it due to my lack of knowledge of 80's computer equipment and Netware, but maybe someone should look at it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.93.155.35 (talk) 14:42, 9 May 2007 (UTC).

MFM and RLL are different VERY old ways to "talk" to the precedors of the later IDE disks. IIRC the encoding of data on the physical disk was done in totally different way. The controllers for RLL and MFM disks were different an 100% incompatible, there I'm sure.

Basically this might be a CITE from a NetWare 2.2 whitepaper. This should be moved to some "museum / history section", as in these days it WAS remarkeble that an OS was supporting any available disk type on the market. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.63.70.206 (talk) 09:01, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Strategic Mistake Wording

It lists the strategic mistakes as starting around 1995, and then in the next sentence lists FreeBSD and Linux as viable alternatives. FreeBSD 4 didn't rear it's ugly head until 2000 (according to wiki), and I am not entirely convinced linux was all the rage in 1995 either. I don't know that the article intends to say that these OSes were popular in 1995, but the wording is unclear. 69.143.88.44 (talk) 06:13, 20 February 2008 (UTC)