Novell Wednesday reported the net income loss for the third quarter of its 2007 fiscal year fell by nearly 50% compared to the same quarter last year, and the company said revenue was up nearly 3% to $243 million.

Tightening of the belt has seemingly paid off for Novell. The enterprise earned 38 million USD in the last quarter with Linux products. Novell’s turnover for the third quarter this year is lower than that of the third quarter last year, but the figures are still in the black. Novell closed out 2009’s third quarter with a profit of 17 million USD.

Novell's Linux business is keeping the company buoyant in trying economic times, the company's third-quarter earnings indicate. On Thursday, the software maker published its third-quarter results, which revealed that revenue from its Linux platform products had increased 22 percent, year-on-year, to US$38 million.

Novell beat Wall Street's estimates with a solid third quarter, but the real story is in its continued Linux growth. Net revenue rose to $245 million from $237 million in 2007, but Novell's third-quarter loss quadrupled to $15.1 million from $3.7 million in 2007.

American Linux distributor Red Hat has announced its first quarter financial results, which show an increase in total revenue and subscription revenue by 20 per cent over same quarter last year

Red Hat continues to demonstrate its dominance of the enterprise Linux market. The company reported a blow-out third quarter, with total revenue of $135.4 million, an increase of 28% from the year ago quarter and 6% from the prior quarter. Subscription revenue was $115.7 million, up 30% year-over-year and 6% sequentially.

Enterprise software vendor Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL) fell short of its guidance for the third fiscal quarter of 2010, missing its financial projections with both revenues and income declining.

At the close of trading Thursday, Microsoft announced the results for its second quarter of fiscal year 2010, which ended December 31, 2009. Revenue of $19.02 billion, a 14 percent increase from the same period of the prior year, set a new a record for the company.

Well, that only took six years and change. As part of its discussion of its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2010 ended in January, Dana Russell, chief financial officer at operating system and systems software maker Novell, said that the SUSE Linux business was at break-even, what he called "a significant milestone."