Novell accused of reselling Red Hat code, Dec 05, 2007

A top Red Hat executive has accused arch-rival Novell of reselling a beta version of the company's open source code.

Linux cannot be stopped by Microsoft, according to Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, who has given his views on where Linux is going over the next year.

Back in the early 1990s, when Linux initiator Linus Torwalds and open source software started to make headlines, the idea of giving software away seemed crazy. Looking at the headway the movement has made since then, you might be forgiven for wondering why Linux desktops have failed to become as ubiquitous as Linux servers are.

Red Hat and Intel will deliver software that supports fully-managed desktop PCs using Intel's vPro technology.

The next revision of the Linux kernel is to include a virtualization feature developed by VMware, called VMI.

Can Dell really offer Linux on its desktops? That's a question that a number of industry observers are asking. Most conclude that it can't -- but are they right?

Is Red Hat doing enough to reassure its customers that it remains focused on what it does and can stay ahead of its growing number of competitors? That's the question the open source Linux subscription company ought to be asking itself -- but is it?

... clearly the success of Red Hat's business model, which converts open source software into a source of cash by providing service and support contracts is a lesson that was not lost on Oracle -- and is now one that Sun is emulating.

Linux distributor Xandros has made a bid for the desktop just before Microsoft ships Vista.

The fact that VMware's first ever product, VMware Workstation, was based on Linux has meant that the company has always been very Linux-friendly.

Where do Unix shops who want to migrate go next? You'd think they go for Linux. Or is it Windows? It depends who's asking.

According Microsoft-commissioned research, contrary to what one might see as a natural move over from Unix to Linux, more ex-Unix shops run Windows than Linux.

Virtualisation technology is about to take one more step forward, if Sun's announcement that it plans to integrate Solaris containers for Linux applications bears fruit. The feature is, said Sun, designed to allow organisations to run Red Hat binaries unmodified in containers on the Sun OS by year end. Additionally, Sun has demonstrated virtual Solaris in a Xen wrapper.

Companies find that their Linux server setups are less hardware-hungry than Windows-based systems, if the results of a recent survey are to be believed.

Red Hat and HP are collaborating to bundle Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and other tools on HP blade servers for the first time.

Worldwide, Linux has enjoyed double-digital growth for 11 consecutive quarters, and we'll double the size of the market between now and 2008.

Windows is taking the server OS market by storm - and Linux has no hope of catching it, according to market researcher IDC.

There's one more, and potentially life-saving crutch for Itanium -- and that's Linux. Even Dell offers Red Hat Linux on its high-end servers, while on its (even higher) high-end systems HP offers only Linux or its own OpenVMS -- which despite the protestations of some of its ardent supporters, looks to be going nowhere today.

Once big, loud and proud, SCO has laid itself low -- low on cash, low on business and, most crucially of all, low in the esteem of its competitors and customers. It got into this pickle either out of desperation, or maybe from an actual belief that IBM had stolen some of its intellectual property, or most probably an amalgam of the two.

Bluetooth support, the latest kernel, Gnome and KDE desktops and the web authoring package Nvu are among the updated features of Novell's just-launched SUSE Linux Professional 9.2. With availability due in November, Novell sees the update as another step towards the Linux desktop for everyman, and reckons the OS update "provides Linux newcomers and enthusiasts with the latest advancements in open source technology."

In the last week, we've seen Schwartz slag off Red Hat, not to mention Linux in general - which Schwartz persists in spelling linux (lower case) on the grounds that there's more than one. Nit-picking on this linguistic point, it's initially attractive because, if there's only one of something it should attract a capital letter. However Schwartz ignores the obvious precedent of Unix always being capitalised, despite the existence of more than one Unix.