Here is the latest in a series which began a month ago.

I am still in the process of rebuilding my main PC after a major hardware crash (hard drive and CD-ROM). Having not followed the news yesterday (and part of Thursday), the Web site may require some catching up over the weekend. We apologise for a high pace in advance. In the mean time, here is the weekly dump of stories that glorify Novell rather than criticise it.

The gentle side of Novell is shown in this writing about a staff member of theirs. A few days after I had spotted and saved it, I noticed that so did Novell's PR, which even blogged about it.

Olds, who is one of the original architects of Novell's eDirectory and currently heads up its Bandit project, has had the ramshackle tuba since high school when he found it sitting in his neighbor's trash.

Novell gets in a bundle!

The SMB bundle is an all-in-one package of software, hardware and services especially designed to improve the email security and archiving capabilities of Novell GroupWise targeting small- and medium-size organizations with 100 or more email users.

Novell released a product which targets small businesses. There was a press release about it, and it made some waves.

"Small businesses are increasingly interested in Linux," said Ray Boggs, vice president of Small/Medium Business Research at IDC.

Novell has also published some information about quality of support and it claims to have "the Best Linux Support in the World". Registration is needed for viewing, so here is a peripheral page with the gist.

When it comes to Linux, support really matters. If you're going to run your mission-critical applications on Linux, then you need a partner who will support you every step of the way.

The selfish deal with Microsoft has shown declining profits and led to some disappointment, but some more recent figures are a bit baffling. Rise in gross profits is shown here. After some analysts called NOVL a "strong sell", someone begged to differ.

Analyst Kirk Materne of Banc of America Securities maintains his "buy" rating on Novell Inc. The target price is set to $8.50.

A few days ago, another podcast in support of Novell was published and advertised. It's titled the 'SUSE Linux Enterprise Quality Assurance' Podcast.

Leaving Novell aside for a moment, a Windows site raves about a Xandros server just shortly after their deal with Microsoft:

Virtualization is one of the latest IT buzzwords. The benefits of virtualization include quicker and easier server deployment, fewer physical servers, easier management of heterogeneous environments, and—ultimately—cost savings. I spoke to Danny Essner, Director of Marketing for Xandros, about how Xandros Server Standard Edition 2 meets the market need for server virtualization