In addition to kernel updates and security fixes, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP4 contains new features such as new driver support for certain chip sets, iSCSI and platforms other than i386. Other cool new functionality that has been back-ported from SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 includes virtualization, memory management and multi-pathing. Check it out!

PCI-DSS means a safer shopping season for consumers, but for retailers it means meeting a stringent set of requirements. For Novell, PCI-DSS means leveraging our strengths in identity and security to help retailers implement solutions that allow them to be PCI-DSS compliant. Check out our new PCI-DSS solutions website here.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and in a recent ZDNet “At the Whiteboard” episode, Richard Whitehead, Novell's director of product marketing for systems and resource management, takes just three minutes to illustrate how automation can bridge the gap between physical and virtual machines. Check it out here.

Note to Red Hat: this is open source, remember? Novell is shipping tested and enterprise-hardened Linux with real time capabilities. Just because Red Hat is again late to market (see enterprise Linux desktop, Xen virtualization, etc.) doesn't mean Linux contains "beta code." SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time is already run in production environments, providing real services to real customers like Thomson Financial. For the record, Novell has contributed a vast amount of code to real time Linux, as have many others, including MontaVista, Wind River and Concurrent. But don't take our word for it. Check out the real time community mailing list to see who is making serious contributions to this open source product.

Red Hat often speaks of the value of the open source model because it encourages more and faster innovation. That's what Novell is about with SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time and our other enterprise Linux offerings, to provide innovation to our customers in time to make a greater difference in their businesses. By claiming to be the source of all good things open source and Linux, Red Hat is doing neither the community nor its customers any favors. As the ZDNet.co.uk blogger noted, "It could all be sour grapes because Novell got there first …" That seems like sound insight.

On a related note, some sites have picked up on Red Hat's comments and written headlines like "Novell accused of reselling Red Hat code." Again, this is open source. It isn't Red Hat code any more than the millions of lines of code contributed by Novell and others to dozens of open source projects belong to any one organization or individual. That's the open source model … just like Red Hat used to talk about.