page_title: Novell
section_title: Linux
hierarchical_section_title: Novell / History / Linux
caption_attribution_description: S.u.S.E. Linux GmbH headquarters in Nuremberg. The presence of parent company Novell is also indicated on the building.
context_page_description: Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare, which became the dominant form of personal computer networking during the second half of the 1980s and first half of the 1990s. At its high point, NetWare had a 63 percent share of the market for network operating systems, and by the early 1990s there were over half a million NetWare-based networks installed worldwide. Novell technology contributed to the emergence of local area networks, which displaced the dominant mainframe computing model and changed computing worldwide. Novell became instrumental in making Utah Valley a focus for technology and software development.
  Under the leadership of Ray Noorda, during the early- to mid-1990s Novell attempted to compete directly with Microsoft by acquiring Digital Research, Unix System Laboratories, WordPerfect, and the Quattro Pro division of Borland. These moves did not work out, and NetWare began losing market share once Microsoft bundled network services with the Windows NT operating system and its successors.
context_section_description: In August 2003, Novell acquired Ximian, a developer of open source Linux applications (Evolution, Red Carpet and Mono). This acquisition signaled Novell's plans to move its collective product set onto a Linux kernel.
  In November 2003, Novell acquired Linux OS developer SuSE, which led to a major shift of power in Linux distributions. IBM also invested US$50 million to show support of the SuSE acquisition.
  In mid-2003, Novell released "Novell Enterprise Linux Services" (NNLS), which ported some of the services traditionally associated with NetWare to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) version 8.
  In November 2004, Novell released the Linux-based enterprise desktop Novell Linux Desktop 9, based on Ximian Desktop and SUSE Linux Professional 9.1. This was Novell's first attempt to get into the enterprise desktop market.
  The successor product to NetWare, Open Enterprise Server, was released in March 2005. OES offers all the services previously hosted by NetWare 6.5, and added the choice of delivering those services using either a NetWare 6.5 or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 kernel. The release was aimed to persuade NetWare customers to move to Linux.
  In August 2005, Novell created the openSUSE project, based on SUSE Professional. openSUSE can be downloaded freely and is also available as boxed retail product.
caption: SuSE Linux headquarters and Novell office in Nuremberg in 2007
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