Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell has just announced the general availability of the server and desktop versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise 10, making much of the fact that it has beaten Red Hat with support for the likes of Xen and Xgl graphics.
Both SLES and SLED are reportedly missing the JBoss Application Server, however, suggesting Novell has turned its back on the open source Java middleware after it was snapped up by Linux rival Red Hat for up to $420m.
Instead Novell is reported to have turned to Geronimo, the Apache Software Foundation project, which already has the backing of IBM Corp following its May 2005 acquisition of Geronimo supporter Gluecode Software Inc.
The inclusion of Geronimo with SUSE Linux Enterprise is not a surprise – Novell announced plans to do so in December 2005 as part of a strategic alliance with IBM – but the omission of JBoss is unexpected.
Prior to Red Hat’s acquisition of the Java middleware vendor, Novell that was closer to JBoss than Red Hat, having begun to offer support for the JBoss Application Server in July 2004 before ditching its own exteNd Application Server in favor of JBoss AS in August 2004.
Novell had included JBoss 3.2.3 in both SLES 9 and Novell Linux Desktop 9, and in April maintained that it would continue to work with JBoss despite its acquisition by Red Hat. We have a contract in place with JBoss and we plan to continue to honor that contract, said Novell spokesperson Bruce Lowry at the time.
Novell had not responded for requests to comment on its change of mind by press time.
SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 is the first major update of the company’s Linux platform for two years and delivers a number of technological advancements on both the server and the desktop.
As previously reported when the products were first announced at the company’s BrainShare user conference in March, Novell has beaten Red Hat to market with support for XenSource Inc’s Xen 3.0 virtualization hypervisor technology.
SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 also includes application-level security via the AppArmor code that Novell acquired with Immunix Inc in May 2005 and released under an open source license in January this year.
The new SLED 10, meanwhile, features functionality that enables the OpenOffice.org productivity suite to cope with Microsoft Corp Office macros, as well as technologies enabling Linux to take advantage of accelerated 3D rendering hardware, boosting the operating system’s look and feel.
Novell has also simplified its pricing structure for the new server version, reducing the number of pricing models to two: one for mainframes, and the other for x86, x64, Itanium and IBM Power processor-based servers.
A one year subscription to SLES on a mainframe costs $11,999 with basic support, $15,000 with standard support, and $18,000 with priority support, while for everything else it costs $349 basic, $799 standard, and $1,499 priority. There is no additional cost for virtual server images. A one-year subscription to SLED costs $50 per device.
