I’m not sure I understand that statement. What are the criteria for victory in this case? Beating Microsoft? Unfortunately for us all, nobody is doing that in the workstation or server space. I still think this was a badly thought out decision PR wise on Novell’s part, but saying they pulled defeat from the jaws of victory is over estimating the traction that SLED is having out there.

From a personal standpoint, there are a few things keeping my organization from considering SLED. First and foremost, a student needs to be able to email their word/excel/powerpoint docs between home and school and be able to work on them without formating or other issues. Politics aside, that would be beneficial to be able to have that seamless access to data, whatever tool you’re using. I know it would bring down a LARGE barrier in my own organization.

I think Novell made a PR blunder, and they failed to use their in house OSS resources during all this. I’ve slammed them for this. They make it seem like Microsoft wants to be interoperable with Linux, which is disingenuous business talk for saying “this is the only way we can play with Microsoft”. Novell’s management bumbled this deal with the details, but in the end, it might actually help Linux adoption.

I’m still to see any negatives from the basic community standpoint up to this point. Has any of this impacted your “Linux experience?” I use Ubuntu at home, and I’ve yet to see any negative impact.