Installing Novell Netware 6.5 SP8 (x86) under VirtualBox. This is believed to be the last version of Netware bootstrapped from DOS.
Netware was a popular server-only operating system primarily used to provide network services to DOS and Windows clients, although client support was certainly available for many other contemporary operating systems. It eventually succumbed to the pressures of Windows NT and its progeny.
Netware was particularly noteworthy for NCP (Netware Core Protocol) and its IPX/SPX network stack. IPX/SPX was a de-facto standard on PC networks from the late 80s into the early 2000s, until TCP/IP and the popularity of the Internet led to its demise. Netware was perhaps even better known for NDS (Netware Directory Services), an advanced directory service which proved popular with enterprises up until Active Directory eventually out-competed it. Very early versions of Netware also ran on Motorola 68k systems built by Novell. Towards the end, Netware became an abstraction layer on top of OpenSUSE Linux before it’s eventual demise into commercial obscurity
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