Novell is losing money in the desktop Linux market, but those desktop deals are driving big wins in the server arena, according to Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer John Dragoon. A case in point: Novell’s desktop Linux relationship with Lenovo — the big PC maker — will extend to servers this September, confirms Dragoon.

Basically, Novell and Red Hat won’t be trying to get consumer desktop market share, focusing instead only on the ‘enterprise’ desktop market; Fedora and openSUSE thus appear to be relegated to ‘hobbyist OS’ level. Ubuntu is now THE distro of choice for home use, with no major competitors, but I think we’ve known that for some time:

In case there’s anyone left out there who doesn’t get that the UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) is a big deal for the Linux desktop consider that arguably the most important business Linux desktop, Novell’s SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10 SP2) is now available on MSI’s (Micro-Star International) new Wind Notebook.

It's no secret that Novell would dearly love to trade market share with Red Hat in the Linux market. Red Hat, however, isn't happy with at least one of Novell's chosen strategies for getting there: Cloning.

Soon after I joined Novell, I started blogging about our technology directions. My first entry back in April 2006 was entitled “The Linux Desktop has arrived: The better desktop”. I argued that with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 – due to ship that summer – that the time had come for more significant inroads for Linux into the desktop market.

The desktop Linux market got a big boost earlier this month at LinuxWorld, where Lenovo unveiled plans to soon begin selling ThinkPads preloaded with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. The deal makes Novell the second major vendor to support Linux on its consumer PCs, following the trail Dell blazed in May with its decision to offer machines loaded with Ubuntu Linux.

A bunch of bad news for Novell, brought together under one roof
Market Start Ending

When it comes to the mainstream desktop Linux market, Red Hat has mostly sat on the sidelines — letting folks like Canonical (Ubuntu) and Google (Chrome OS) pursue the spotlight. But now, Red Hat is making some serious desktop moves. But not in a traditional way. Here’s the strategy.

Desktop Linux market share had a growth of about 50% last year according to the recent data by NetMarketShare. If we look at the data for year 2010, there was no growth at all. However, in 2011, starting from 0.96% market share in February, desktop Linux market share ended at 1.41%.