NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: DAVE KEARNS ON NOVELL NETWARE TIPS
12/07/04
Today's focus:  What happened to Novell's embedded Linux 
ambitions?

Dear [EMAIL PROTECTED],

In this issue:

* Where is the embedded SuSE Linux initiative?
* Links related to Novell NetWare Tips
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus:  What happened to Novell's embedded Linux 
ambitions?

By Dave Kearns

One of the stories buzzing around at last spring's BrainShare 
was about Novell possibly returning to the embedded operating 
system arena with a stripped-down, device-enabling version of 
SuSE Linux.

According to then honcho Chris Stone (who has, of course, now 
left the building), Novell was examining three possible ways to 
provide embedded Linux - develop its own technology, sign a 
partnership with another embedded Linux company, or buy a 
company outright. These remarks, by the way, came just a couple 
of weeks after Red Hat - Novell's biggest competitor in the 
Linux market - signed a partnership with embedded computing 
power Wind River Systems. Stone's speculation may have been the 
effect brought about by the Red Hat announcement.

When a reader recently asked me what the progress was on 
embedded Linux at Novell, I turned to Novell PR extraordinaire 
Bruce Lowry who says:

"Today we have three Linux product lines, SuSE Linux Enteprise 
Server, Novell Linux Desktop powered by SuSE Linux, and SuSE 
Linux Professional. Those cover a wide variety of hardware 
architectures from the smallest laptop to the largest server and 
mainframe.

"With these offerings, we already cover parts of the embedded 
market, particularly the appliance market that is based on these 
hardware architectures. This would include cashier systems, 
network or telecommunication switches, network-attached storage 
and storage-area networks, home multimedia systems, and many 
other areas where SuSE Linux supported architectures are used. 
Our minimum footprint as an operating system is smaller then 
50M-bytes.

"We have no near term plans to extend this portfolio to embedded 
devices (particularly small devices like watches, etc.) outside 
of the hardware architectures we are supporting today, but we 
are always investigating new market opportunities."

So it appears that the intiative to develop a stripped-down, 
device-enabling version of SuSE is dead for now. Probably for 
the best as Novell has a poor track record with embedded 
systems. Some of you may remember that there was, some years 
ago, an embedded version of NetWare - Novell Embedded Systems 
Technology (NEST). This was announced with great fanfare in 1995 
and was supposed to lead to a major push for "NetWare-ready" 
devices. In many ways it was a response to Microsoft's 
"plug-and-play" initiative and NEST suffered the fate of most of 
Novell's anti-Microsoft initiatives of the 1990s - it was gone 
within two years.

There are other embedded Linux distributions available - the 
previously mentioned Wind River is perhaps the best known - if 
you really want one. Novell is going to concentrate on the 
server with Open Enterprise Server, and the desktop with Novell 
Linux Desktop (which some wags have already dubbed "Little SuSE 
Desktop") for now. That's probably a wise decision.

RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS

Test: Novell serves up an operating system winner with SLES 9
Network World, 12/06/04
http://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2004/120604slesrev.html
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To contact: Dave Kearns

Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's 
written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print 
"Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be 
found at Virtual Quill <http://www.vquill.com/>.

Kearns is the author of three Network World Newsletters: Windows 
Networking Tips, Novell NetWare Tips, and Identity Management. 
Comments about these newsletters should be sent to him at these 

respective addresses: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.

Kearns provides content services to network vendors: books, 
manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing, 
technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill 
provides "words to sell by..." Find out more by e-mail at 
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
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ARCHIVE LINKS

Archive of the Novell NetWare Tips newsletter:
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/netware/index.html

Novell news page
The Novell news and analysis from Network World Fusion.
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/financial/novell.html
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