Structural and secreterial changes in Novell this week:

• Novell Inc. Board OKs Election Change (more formally covered here)



• Novell Appoints Volker Smid as President, Novell EMEA

Weekend 'reading list':

• Payback time for Novell. This particular article should be taken with a grain of salt because it comes from a notorious Linux basher---Tom Yager.
• Microsoft, HP expand business alliance. This one revolves around sales of Microsoft products (exclusively), as means of battling IBM. We covered the vague preceding announcement a couple of days ago.

Additional remark: the event-driven and release-sensitive DistroWatch currently ranks Opensuse first. This 1^st place comes with a strong condition. Unsurprisingly, this occurred around the time of the most recent release. Bear in mind, therefore, that it occupies the first spot for a one-week average, but whether it's sustainable once the hype has faded and the reviews have aged is another key question.

New distributions with newer packages are due to be released soon. Thus, these figures are misleading and serve as a poor overall indicator. DistroWatch have long-term averages that better reflect on a momentumless state. This clarifications is an important one because Novell is likely to spin arbitrary observations in their favour, just as they did early in the week.