Vmware (A division of EMC) to buy Suse Linux from Novell

In the 90s it was difficult to imagine Novell ever fading away in the enterprise server market. There was no alternative comparable to Netware and NDS. Microsoft completely killed them off with NT Server and then Active Directory with Win2k. We had around 50 clients running Netware, and within 12 months of Active Directory being released, we had switched almsot all of them over to Windows (usually with Linux servers alongside for web stuff).

Some customers were so desperate to move over that we actually installed and rolled out preview releases of Win2k - since it allowed them to manage their network using the GUI and it was a total cost reduction.

Novell simply never responded. They were still stuck on DOS when Win2k provided a familiar GUI and much easier management. In our bespoke rollouts, even we recognized that Win2k wasn't the best at everything, which is why we would almost install some Linux or BSD servers as well (with Samba) (we did so much of these hybrid installs that I ended up writing NDS drivers for Squid, Apache and a bunch of other open source apps - I think that same code is still being used today). Running Windows also meant that you had one unifying network protocol - TCP/IP, instead of IPX/SPX on the network and TCP/IP on the outside.

RFP's from government and large corporations flooded out with requests for Windows rollouts to replace Netware. It was amazing how quickly this happen. A lot of consultants made a lot of bank at that time ripping Novell out of the enterprise and replacing it with Windows, and often Linux as well.

By the time Novell picked up SuSE, it was too late - they had blown the massive lead they had in the enterprise server market and never regained it. Sorta sad what happen to them, since Netware was a great product for its time.

Enterprise Windows, and to an extent, enterprise Linux, owe a lot to the poor strategic decisions Novell made (or didn't make)

I hope Ximian find a good home, there is no mention if they (and Mono etc.) are part of the Linux deal. I wouldn't be surprised if the second buyer is IBM, but Microsoft have also poured a lot of money into Novell the past 5 years, so it could be them.

VMware's newer products for enterprise virtualization (VSphere, 4i) are built on top of the SuSE Linux kernel... so my guess would be a purchase to essentially own the underlying OS kernel they build their product on top of. IIRC, their older products were built using Red Hat instead, they made the switch a couple years ago.

I didn't know that vSphere used a SuSE kernel - that's interesting. I assumed they roll their own for sure.

There must be more to it though - a couple of hundred million dollars for a Linux kernel which you can have for free anyway would be a steep price, even if we consider it as a talent acquisition to get the engineering team which built that kernel.

This is my first comment here. Oh Boy! how easy and fast it was to sign up!!

I sign just to comment because the comment "(VSphere, 4i) are built on top of the SuSE Linux kernel" is so wrong. The Classic ESX has Service Console is is customized RHEL. ESXi does not have the Service Console. It still does have a command console where one can run ESX commands and a limited set of Unix commands which AFAIK are Busybox's. It also has dropbear sshd.

So coming back to the topic, I too have no idea what VMware is going to do with SuSe Linux.

Does anyone know if this includes any the Unix source or copyrights that Novell had as well?