The Var Guy has just expressed his thoughts and made a reasonable argument about Novell's missing edge.

Solid moves. But Novell’s biggest challenge — in small business and in the enterprise — is promoting third-party application integration. Bundling popular open source applications like Zimbra with the small business suite would go a long way toward changing that perception.

In the following press release, Novell's legacy is said to have been replaced by good old Debian.

In 2006 ESR Technology lowered its annual IT costs by 78% after migrating from Netware to Debian Linux. With the help of Sirius Corporation, the Open Source services group, ESR Technology aims to repeat the success of this first project during their expansion into Dubai.

As usual, SUSE gets no love from ITWire. It's not because the distribution is deficient, but because the management at Novell made its direction somewhat repellent. Novell's direction is no longer in alignment with Linux's direction. They are going the .NET route, with patents and so-called binary bridges. They still live (yet no longer thrive) in a proprietary era.

Linux users don't accept criticism of their chosen distribution easily - that's probably why a number of reactions to my last piece about openSUSE tended to be somewhat short of making a point.

He seems like another victim of the 'Novell patrol'. No criticism of SUSE survives without some rude feedback.