Novell is to release new updates for its SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time operating system next month.

Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat today kicked out the 1.2 release of its Enterprise MRG Linux variant for real-time, messaging, and grid computing. Enterprise MRG was launched as an idea in December 2007 in the wake of Novell's roll-out of its SUSE Linux Enterprise Real-Time variant of its SLES server Linux distro a month earlier.

Novell is shipping the first real-time SUSE Linux enterprise data center operating system, SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10.

"Novell has announced that it will release an update to its SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time, SLERT, extensions in July, based on the recently launched SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Service Pack 1."

The real-time web is shaping up to be the next online revolution, and as we saw during our RealTime CrunchUp earlier this month, it’s already begun. But there are still some things that are holding us back — for one, many services still aren’t actually real time, they’re just something close to it.

When Novell Brainshare 2010 kicks off March 21 in Salt Lake City, the company will put several initiatives in the spotlight. Among the top two priorities. Promoting Novell Pulse (a real-time communication and social messaging platform for enterprises) and promoting SUSE Linux software partners. Here are the details.

This article, the first in a three-part series, describes some of these features and explains how you can apply them to enable real-time performance in your own applications.

With Red Hat, Novell - and now Intel, thanks to its $884m acquisition of Wind River - all crowding into the real-time Linux space, Concurrent has to keep on its toes and keep its RedHawk Linux, well, current. With RedHawk Linux 5.4, announced Tuesday, Concurrent is slipping into Linux 2.6.31 and offering full compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 update 4.

For the last several years, Red Hat has been pushing forward the development of real-time enhancements for Linux. Yet the company has made no formal product announcement of how it would attempt to productize its real-time Linux innovations.