Linux adoption has increased manifold in India. Several government bodies, private firms and SMEs have been the big takers of Linux platform.

For the quarter, Novell's sales fell by 7 per cent to $214.9m and were hurt by a dramatic drop off in software license sales, which fell by 29.7 per cent to $28.3m. Services sales at the company fell even more dramatically, down 31.7 per cent to $27.8m.

Novell has reported a year-on-year fall in second-quarter revenue, but a small rise in profit as a result of a 25 per cent growth in Linux product sales.

But that's not the whole story. JBoss drives $10 in services revenue for every $1 in subscription revenue, which makes JBoss much more interesting to Red Hat's channel partners than RHEL.

The commercial Linux market in China has seen sales value increase 22.6 per cent over the past year, according to new research.

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

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.

The number of Windows users surfing the web fell below 90 per cent for the first time, making for Microsoft's biggest market share drop in the past two years, according to new statistics.

While it has an over 20 per cent market share when we speak of servers in India, the free OS called Linux has just around 5 per cent market share in the country when it comes to desktops -- the lion's share going to Microsoft Windows. The scenario is gradually changing, it appears.