Novell client for Vista: offical news!

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Novell Open Audio did a piece on the client!

Find it here: http://www.novell.com/feeds/openaudio/?p=119

I took notes so you don't have to!
  • There will be a Tech Preview of the Vista client released in late January. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
  • The login experience will change by definition, since Microsoft did away with the GINA.
  • There will be no IPX support.
  • The Tech Preview is not UI-complete, so end-user experience may change between the tech-preview and code-ship.
  • They're targeting release in "the OES2 timeframe," which I know from other podcasts to be late May to early June.
  • The Beta program (closed) signup will be in February.
  • 802.1x integration will be a module for both the Vista client and the WinXP 4.91 client. They use Microsoft's EAP hooks, rather than build their own.
  • All the installation modules for the client are fully signed, per Microsoft specification.
  • Dynamic Local Users have been an especially tricky thing to engineer.
  • The Zen Agent for Desktops is not included in the client. That'll come out on the Zen timeline, which was not covered in the interview.
  • Printing may not work the way you want it to in the Tech Preview.
And a transcribed quote from Jason Williams, project manager for OES and the Novell Client, regarding his philosophy for the timeline of releasing client builds:
"...you know, this is something that doesn't mess with, but interacts with Vista at a very low level. And there is NO WAY I'm going to release something like that, that interacts with a Brand Spanking New operating system, by Microsoft, that's got a new driver model, a new driver signing process, a new API set, a new method of working, a new notification tray, a new GINA, I'm not going to release that thing until I'm certain it's actually ready and our customers are going to be able to use it with confidence. Because if I just ship that thing out there and say, 'hey, we're done,' and it didn't work, then it's just not going to happen." [...] "Same thing with iPrint, and same thing with iFolder."
I've heard a lot of complaining about how Novell not having a client reflects very poorly on Novell as a company. Vista desktops are already on desks in enterprises, they should have had something. Especially since Microsoft had so many betas and RCs to develop against. Jason Williams addressed it this way.

Look at it this way. How many drivers and clients are production ready right now? So far only Intel has offical non-beta drivers. ATI and NVidia both only have beta drivers for their display adaptors. Creative Labs only has beta drivers for their sound cards. Vista is not enterprise ready yet, so Novell not having a beta out to try out is really not that bad.

My view of it comes closer to Mr. Williams. Microsoft has been diddling the security model on Vista all through the Beta and Release Candidate stages. There are bits there that were changed between the final release candidate and RTM that affect the security environment. The Novell client by necessity, through inserting itself into the authentication stream, was affected by that. DLU means that the Novell client has to be able to automatically generate user accounts from eDirectory information, which is a deep in the bowels security action. Password synchronization between eDir and the Vista desktop is another deep in the bowels security action. All of these can be affected by small changes in how Vista behaves with security.

The Novell Client isn't as simple as a display driver, it has to meld itself into a lot of the Vista security environment. This is something that Microsoft spent years making harder to accomplish, and they were tweaking bits of it right up until RTM. That takes time to engineer around.

I just hope that they refresh the technical previews periodically. I know we'll be prototyping distribution methods with those technical previews. After speaking with one of our higher desktop support managers, we don't have the man-power to participate in the Beta program. Therefore, we'll be dependant on technical previews and the open beta when it starts.

3 Comments

I can't believe they even need to say that there won't be IPX support. Who would still be running IPX anymore? Some obscure, super-secret government organization who wants to secure their data via obscurity? Seriously, I just can't imagine why anyone wouldn't have already switched to IP by now.

Nice write up. Thanks!--Ted

Cheers. I'm glad there was some confirmation on this. I might be off base, but I think the major gripe was that Novell was quiet about a client, as in not confirming it existed. A confirmation that they're working on it is good enough for me. Although, I won't get my hands on Vista for at least a year anyway, and any sort of large scale deployment is at least two years out.