OStatic

While Novell's report yesterday that its quarterly Linux revenue soared 22 percent year-over-year was a positive note, and one that was expected, the real upshot of the company's earnings report was that every other part of its business sank. Overall, its revenues slipped to $216 million for the quarter, compared to $245 million for the comparable quarter last year. Despite the company's drum pounding about the promise and growth of its Linux business, Novell is a public company that needs revenues to come from more than one aspect of its business.?

As Matt Asay notes, Red Hat's financial performance has been much rosier during the recession, but there are also questions arising about why Red Hat's revenue growth is slowing. Both companies need more than just Linux business to grow over the long run, and there are good reasons to believe that Red Hat may be the one of the two that pulls a rabbit--or a series of them--out of its red hat.?

Novell's Linux revenue soars 22 percent, while everything else tanks. The bad news was that overall, net revenue slumped to $216 million from $245 million for the third fiscal quarter of 2008.

Google's Summer of Code ends. 1,000 students from 69 countries contributed open source solutions in microfinance software, government data apps, and more.

Aussies coming through with a laptop per child. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has begun fulfilling a promise to give every high school student a laptop, offering Lenovo machines with Windows 7 and some surprising open source applications.

15 great Ubuntu tips For Linux power users. How to be lightning fast and clever at the command line, and more.

?Boxee raises $6 million, announces other deals. The company behind the well-liked open source media center app is on a roll.

Investor reveals secret to $1.6 billion in open source success. VC Peter Fenton has spurred on four big open-source sales--JBoss ($350 million), Zimbra ($350 million), XenSource ($500 million), and SpringSource ($420 million).

If you have a proprietary partner is it still open source? Jaspersoft and Talend are teaming with two proprietary vendors to deliver a business intelligence solution for clouds.

Hands on with SUSE Studio. Novell's service allows you to create your own Linux distro respin using nothing more than a web browser.

Consider Linux for secure online banking. Because it isn't a big target for hackers, and for other reasons, it's an ideal platform.

A Moblin netbook by this fall? The first netbook pre-installed with the Moblin v2 operating system technology may reach market in October--on Asus' Seashell system.

Today, Novell announced its SUSE Appliance Program, which encompasses Suse Studio Online, a customizable, lightweight version of Linux called SUSE Linux Enterprise JeOS (Just Enough Operating System), tie-ins with Amazon's cloud services, and full support for custom software. According to the company it is an end-to-end appliance solution that enables ISVs to rapidly build, update, configure and go to market with fully supported software and virtual appliances. In essence, developers can quickly use Novell's tools to build software appliances and even custom operating systems, and then use Amazon's cloud services and Novell's distribution channel to reach new users in new markets, with help available.?

Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Ingres and others have voiced support for the program, and Novell claims that more than 3,800 ISV applications are currently certified on the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform. Here are more of the details.?

Even as the economy has stayed in the doldrums, Red Hat continues to post strong quarterly financial results. Late Wednesday, the company reported first quarter revenues of $174.4 million, up 11 percent from $156.6 million a year earlier. Profits were also up, with quarterly earnings of $18.5 million, or 10 cents a share, up from a profit of $17.3 million, or 8 cents a share, for the same quarter last year.

Red Hat?s growth is driven in part by our ability to help enterprise customers save money in a challenging IT spending environment, said CEO Jim Whitehurst. Our open source solutions drive new capabilities, efficiencies and functionality into the mission critical infrastructure of our customers.? Red Hat's total cash, cash equivalents and investments as of May 31, 2009 sat at a whopping $884.5 million, which is more evidence of the investment savvy that Whitehurst and Red Hat's top brass have.

Fedora 11 is now available. It features ext4, the latest GNOME, KDE and XFCE releases, and Microsoft Exchange compatibility.

Mozilla to deliver a preview of Firefox 3.5 today. It will arrive in advance of the official Release Candidate 1.

Novell is considering an open source app store. It's a new way of marketing open source, officials say.

KDE On Windows continues. There are rumors that KDE isn't moving forward on the Windows platform--not true.

Seen: Linux notebooks with ARM CPUs. Freescale and Qualcomm have coined the term smartbook for them.

Novell Linux revenue soars as global server revenue plummets. The company reported Thursday that its Linux Platform revenue climbed 25 percent year over year in one of the worst recessions in history.

Google expects 18 Android phones by year's end. Andy Rubin, senior director for Mobile Platforms for Google, said the number could be as high as 20.

A grab bag of Linux games. From first person shooters to racing games, here are some titles to try over the weekend.

Microsoft Update quietly installs Firefox extension. A routine security update for a Microsoft Windows component installs a .NET update extension.

Navigate the web faster with these Firefox hotkeys. Here are a whole lot of easy shortcuts.

openSUSE recently announced the dates and agenda for its very first Community Week. Much like the Ubuntu team's OpenWeek, the purpose of Community Week is to assemble and introduce new contributors all over the Linux-using world to each other, and the openSUSE Project. And while developers are a vital part of an open source community and are encouraged to attend and get involved in openSUSE's Community Week, participants don't necessarily need programming skills -- only a willingness to learn, connect and pitch in the skills they possess.

Community Week kicks off on Monday, May 11th and concludes on May 17th. Most of the events take place on Freenode, with individual components (such as openSUSE-specific discussions on KDE, GNOME, or marketing) having their own unique #openSUSE-project channels and schedules.

As the story broke yesterday that Novell and Intel were joining forces to encourage OEMs and ODMs to use the Linux-based Moblin platform on netbooks and small devices, a number of comments -- and questions -- began swirling in the open source world.

InfoWorld wonders if the collaboration efforts aren't a bad omen for Novell's SUSE Linux, while CNet's Matt Asay thinks the move could be a positive one for Moblin and Novell, and one that could ultimately give Google's Android a real fight.