Netware

Each operating system has its pluses and minueses. Asking this question is an easy way to start an argument. As for stability, I think it is much better than Windows as a server platform. Its security and file and print services are faster and much more robust and resilient.

To me it is easy to learn. So was Linux, so was Windows NT/2000.

If you want to learn it, set up a network at your home and go from there.

I think you're asking two questions here. Server management and user/printer/whatever-management are two separate things.
The first requires that you understand something about hardware, RAID, LAN technologies and so. I don't think the utilities and commands for that part are very complex at all.
The second is a bit more difficult. You have to understand what a user or a printer requires (access or not to certain files for example, and how to easily set that up), but also what the relationship between the different objects in NDS is. For example, you can give access rights to a file on a netware volume, but if that same user hasn't got browse-rights to that same volume's object in NDS, he won't be able to access the file properly.Still, I wouldn't say it's very difficult. All is based on some very basic rules ("rights are inherited down the tree" and so), and it doesn't require you to drop everything you ever learned about computers or so. After all, access rights to a file, whatever OS, whatever the name of the rights, is the same everywhere.
I think it all boils down to how interested you are. If you feel like you have to for some reason, you'll never properly learn the different utilities and how to use them. Ifyou're keen and curious, you can learn yourself anything.
Indeed, build a small network, enjoy yourself in a basement, try to find the solution to some scenarios and see how self-explaining (or not) you find things, and see if this really tickles your interest. If it does, then no, it's not complex or difficult to learn.

Jim

I'd have to say pretty easy. As a certified trainer of both NetWare and Windows, I have had quite a few students who have started out as no more than your average basically PC-literate user and successfully made the transition to network administrator. Unless a large complex network is involved, the standard 5-day NetWare Admin course pretty much gets you to a point where you can handle daily administration. Design and stuff takes a little more work, but it's way easier than 2000. You should expect a lot less ongoing headaches, too.

Daily Administration is piece of cake.
The hardest parts are efficient NDS design and server performance tuning. NetWare is extremely flexible and has an endless amount of switches and varibles you can change to tune and tweak the server to your exact requirements.

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