If you recall, Novell's former best friend for SUSE Linux was Microsoft. Microsoft and Novell have a partnership where the two parties had certificates that indemnified SUSE users from any intellectual property liability. In addition, Microsoft officially recommended SUSE Linux Enterprise for hybrid Windows/Linux shops.

Novell is preparing to launch an app store called SUSE Gallery. It's designed to help partners and customers find SUSE Linux software appliances that fulfill specific business application needs. Plus, SUSE Gallery effort shows signs that Novell and VMware will continue their joint attack on Red Hat. Here's the scoop.

Given the outcry in the open-source community over the coupon deal Novell struck with Microsoft, you can only begin to imagine the mother of all rumpuses that would ensue if SUSE actually ended up in the Redmond bed, but these things have a habit of dying down eventually. What happens if Microsoft doesn't buy Novell, and SUSE gets sold off to somebody else?

To date, Novell has had strong usage of its online SUSE Studio Linux appliance development service, with over 250,000 software appliances built. Even with that success, Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL) sees a need to expand the effort with a new SUSE Appliance Toolkit providing an on-premises version of SUSE Studio, as well as a new Lifecycle Management Server to manage appliance updates.

At the end of July, Novell launched SUSE Studio, which it calls a "simple and fast appliance builder". It provides a free and easy-to-use, web-based user interface to roll your own customized (SUSE) Linux distribution. The resulting image can be deployed on bare metal or as a virtual appliance on a hypervisor.

Novell has launched a new Web service called SUSE Studio that simplifies the process of building Linux-based software appliances. It provides a convenient interface for creating custom versions of Novell's SUSE Linux distribution with specialized configurations. The service is part of Novell's broader SUSE Appliance Program initiative.

Novell has announced the launch of the SUSE Appliance Program for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). With the Appliance Program, ISVs can can create software appliances, such as an email server for a small office, using SUSE Linux Enterprise or openSUSE and SUSE Studio, test their appliances and get them to the market.

Bits from the press about Novell and virtualisation for the most part. MANY people may not remember this, but Ron Hovsepian admitted giving power to Microsoft in the datacentres. It was part of the deal that Novell should permit Windows to run as a host and SUSE usually be a guest.

I just can't hold back anymore. I've been running Linux a long, long time, and in the past five years, I have been working more and more with SuSE Linux. About five years ago (roughly), Novell acquired the rights to SuSE Linux in the United States.