I went to a Novell event in London today. We were interested in their shift to Linux and possibly in using their Suse Linux Enterprise Server.
What I wasn’t expecting was for them to say that they were after the desktop market as well. CTO Jeff Jaffe spoke to us about his desire to get Suse Linux on most desktops in the workplace. He explained why Windows Vista is so named (it’s always somewhere on the horizon). And he looks and talks, rather spookily, a bit like Bill Gates. He must be the anti-Bill!
I’ve not tried my freebie beta copy of Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 yet – but it’s clear that Novell are pretty excited about it. Jeff Jaffe made a couple of freudian slips, saying ‘desktop’ when he meant ‘server’. Or ‘sandwich’. Or indeed anything that wasn’t ‘desktop’.
As I sat there I thought that they must be crazy to go after the desktop. But then I thought about Apple and their relatively small team who can knock out release after release of OS X because they use open source components. Clearly Novell can do the same with Suse Linux, while Microsoft spend gazillions of dollars, writing everything in-house, and spending yet another year not shipping Vista. And you have to admit, Microsoft are very good at not shipping Vista.
How do you pronounce that, “suse”? Actually, would I be better off not knowing? Look at all the trouble I got into when I learned how to pronounce “schadenfreude”.
I think we agreed – after much haggling and making silly noises – on “Soo-suh”.
And I think I got the camel caps all wrong – probably should be SuSE.
Oddly, Novell have just sacked their CEO. Seems like an odd time to do that…