novell

As Microsoft hits the second anniversary of its deal with Novell, the software makers announce they are nearly ready with a beta version of the Linux-based Silverlight player.

Novell has a prime opportunity to use its crumbling stock price to its advantage.

Microsoft and Novell had their first virtualization child Thursday. A joint virtualization effort that couples SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell operating with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

The news itself isn’t all that important–part of the Microsoft-Novell pact–dictated that SUSE would use the software giant’s virtualization technology.

Novell’s fiscal third quarter was notable for reasons beyond Linux sales and its core product line. Novell’s most recent quarter was the sixth consecutive one that topped expectations.

That consistency may mark the days where Novell becomes something more than an afterthought.

Microsoft and Novell said Wednesday that the software giant will invest more into the companies’ SUSE Linux partnership.

As part of the agreement, Microsoft will buy an additional $100 million in SUSE Linux support certificates.

The partnership (all posts) between Novell and Microsoft kicked off in November 2006 with a five year agreement worth $240 million.

First public release of Novell's Moonlight, backed by Microsoft, to compete with products from Adobe, Sun, and Apple.
(By Matthew Broersma of ZDNet UK)

Last week, I blogged about the possible future of a unified UNIX GPLv3 operating system “mother distro” comprising the merged source code of the Solaris and Linux kernels (and presumably, the source code of other vendors as well) and related GNU stack with associated tools and applications.

The Linux Foundation on Tuesday released a report on Linux kernel development that is essentially a census of the open source operation.

While much has been made about Novell’s doubling of contributions to the Linux kernel, the two biggest categories of contributors aren’t sponsored by any one company.

Fellow ZDNet blogger Dan Kusnetzsky this morning addresses the organizational challenges of integrating Novell integrating virtualization ISV Platespin into its culture.

At this week's VMworld Europe in Cannes, France, Novell made an announcement that was more startling to the server virtualization bourgeoisie than a tepid Merlot.