[rescue] quad 486 (Novell & UNIX)

[Patrick Giagnocavo +1.717.201.3366]

On Sun, Feb 23, 2003 at 10:35:21PM -0500, Kevin wrote:

> UNIX with Novell on top?  How did this work, like a virtual
> machine kind of thing?  I assume this was back when Novell
> "owned" UNIX?

Basically yes.  They called it "SuperNOS", NOS being network operating
system.

They also made Novell available under Linux, IIRC.  I don't think it
sold well.

Novell was screwed for the long-term when you realize that the reason
they did well was because they set things up for their VARs to make
money.

Thus, they did not make things work out of the box, since someone
could bypass the VAR that way; so you had to have a VAR come out and
set up things for you, thus making the VAR some cash.  For instance
the older network client where you had to "compile" the driver, and
the setup of the Novell OS.

As soon as NT came along, which any idiot could install, Novell was in
trouble.  With Linux, they became even more in trouble.

--Patrick