Attachmate Snaps Up Novell (and SUSE)

Attachemate announced that they would purchase Novell for US$2.2 billion. This is good news – or seems to be, at least.

Attachmate merged with WRQ in 2005. WRQ was the company behind the Reflection for X product, which is an X server for Windows. Despite all the free and commercial competition, I always thought Reflection for X was one of the best available servers for Windows – and full-featured too.

Reflection for X has continued on since the Attachmate/WRQ merger, and the product seems to be healthy and vibrant.

I would expect – and hope – that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) would continue and be invigorated with new life in the new corporation. We’ll see how this goes.

GNOME and Mono are also part of the transition, as I think I’ve said before. Being open source, they will likely continue if the original projects are hamstrung or crippled or shut down; however, my experiences with Attachmate suggest that there is a decent chance things will go well for the new SUSE and the new Novell.

Let’s hope so.

Update: GrokLaw has a fantastic article detailing all the legal maneuvers as well as a list of articles from elsewhere on the web. Turns out there is also two different shareholder lawsuits in progress: one from Kendall Law Group, and one from Brodsky & Smith. It also happens that the previously rejected Novell buyer, Elliot Management, will now be a shareholder in Attachmate as part of the deal.

This is interesting…

VMware to Buy Novell’s Linux Business?

This is very interesting indeed. VMware and Novell just announced that VMware would sell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on VMware’s vSphere product (with full support by VMware) – and now there is a report by the Wall Street Journal that Novell’s Linux business could be bought by VMware. Talks are continuing, but this is intriguing to say the least.

The focus is on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, but Novell’s Linux “businesses” also include GNOME and Mono; it should be interesting to see what happens next.

Novell has been through some very rough times – first WordPerfect, then Netware, then UNIXware, and now SUSE. When SCO (not The SCO Group!) was split up, what was left was a shell of its former self; I hope that does not happen to Novell.

If VMware buys Novell’s Linux business, then SUSE would join Zimbra and SpringSource in the fold.

Let’s not forget, too, that VMware is owned by the storage company EMC. This could make itself felt in superior support for EMC products in SUSE Linux.

Personally, I feel better about SUSE being in the hands of VMware than I ever did thinking about Sun (and Solaris) in the hands of Oracle. I would also be surprised if some other company got SUSE instead; with the recent cooperation between the two companies VMware is the natural choice.

There was also the rumor that Attachmate would take on some of Novell’s other businesses. Attachmate has been good to the Reflection Suite for X that I like and recommend; perhaps Attachmate could be a good match as well.

Administrator Experiences with VMware and SUSE Linux

Recently, VMware announced a partnership with Novell in which they would support Novel SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) directly on VMware vSphere. Neil over at VirtuallyNil wrote about his experiences with SLES and VMware ESXI. Unfortunately, he had some problems with VMware’s additions to SLES.

To enhance the experience with virtual machines, virtual environment managers add tools to the guest environments – and VMware is no different. For SLES there are tools available that permit advanced operations directly from the virtual machine manager. With ESXI, these are available for SLES 10 and SLES 11 – but not SLES 11 SP1.

This means that you either build your own SLES 11 SP1 tools or you cannot upgrade your SLES 11 to the most recent patch level. This is unfortunate.

I have experienced this before with an application that required a particular version of Red Hat Linux (7.1 if I remember rightly) even though that version of Red Hat was no longer supported by Red Hat itself.

Also, Neil points out two other sites that have images of people’s direct experiences with the new VMware-supported SLES. One first look comes from vcritical.com (a blog by Eric Gray, a VMware employee); the other comes from Jase McCarty at Jase’s Place.

Novell and VMware Team Up

VMware announced in June that Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) will be shipped with every copy of VMware’s vSphere product. In addition, VMware sales staff will have incentives to sell SLES. During the recent sales call by Novell, they expanded on the details of the enhanced partnership.

According to VMware’s page for SLES on VMware, it also sounds as if current vSphere customers would be eligible for a supported copy of SLES as well.

This is incredible news – it means that SUSE may be able to gain some traction in the data center. I’ve been partial to SUSE in some ways ever since I found that XFS (and JFS!) had been supported in SUSE Linux for years before Red Hat did – SUSE has always supported technologies first, providing more value than Red Hat did.

I also supported SUSE Linux in the data center in the past; it has been rock solid (as is Red Hat). SUSE Linux has a lot to offer – as does OpenSUSE (which just recently introduced 11.3).

Red Hat has always done well – as it should – but SUSE has been in the shadows for too long.

It has also been noted that VMware could be a company that buys SUSE and Novell’s Linux business. VMware was bought by EMC not that long ago. Cisco also has a joint venture with EMC that includes VMware products. Is it possible that Cisco will be shipping products with SLES on them?

SUSE Studio: Build Your Own Distro

Novell created and put up something called SUSE Studio, a web site dedicated to helping you create your own Novell SUSE-based Linux distribution. SUSE Studio is extensively documented over at the OpenSUSE wiki.

SUSE studio takes you through all the possibilities, and allows you to extensively customize the resulting distribution, including wallpaper, scripts, software, and more.

You can choose what form (or forms) the ending result takes: a VMware image, a Xen virtual image, a Live CD/DVD, and others. You can even run the image live over the web using a Flash-based console or VNC.

Over at ComputerWorld, they reviewed the updated SUSE Studio extensively; I plan to give it a try in the upcoming weeks. Should be interesting.

Elliott Associates to Buy Novell?

Elliott Associates made an offer for Novell today at almost US$2 billion ($5.75 per share). GigaOM reported on this, as did the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal.

There is as yet no response from Novell; company officials are expected to announce their response on Wednesday, 3 March 2010.

Any takeover would affect a large number of things, including open source projects and current Linux offerings. Some of these include:

• Novell v. SCO. This court case is over the copyrights to the UNIX name and code; it remains open and active, in spite of SCO’s bankruptcy filing.
• SUSE. Novell’s acquisition of SUSE brought SUSE under the Novell umbrella, and there are several products available, including the open source OpenSUSE.
• Ximian. Ximian was acquired by Novell years ago, which brought Linux GNOME expertise in-house and led to the development of Mono for Linux.
• Groupwise. Groupwise is Novell’s competition to Microsoft’s Exchange.

This should be interesting; let’s see what Novell says tomorrow.