Will Novell, or Only Apple, Gain from Microsoft Vista Delay? (AAPL, MSFT, NOVL)

In addition to Google, Apple and Adobe Systems, the delay of Windows Vista should help Novell, according to this story:

Senior Vice President John Dragoon, boosting the Novell's latest Linux-based desktop suite Wednesday at the company's BrainShare conference at the Salt Palace, held up a newspaper with a headline saying, "Microsoft Delays New Windows."

"Why, I feel bad for them," he joked.

A test version of the Vista, designed to replace the Windows XP operating system, reportedly was found by reviewers to be short on "finesse, polish and general impressiveness," Dragoon said.

...Novell's SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 - SLED 10 - and its applications are available now, "and I can guarantee that what you see today (in a demonstration) will be impressive, will have polish and will give you hope and confidence that there actually is a legitimate choice," Dragoon said.

Novell then provided a demonstration of its SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 during the BrainShare conference. According to a report from DeseretNews.com,

Nat Friedman, Novell vice president of Linux desktop engineering, said the new desktop is for corporate America's "knowledge workers."

"Our goal of Desktop 10 is to build a really easy-to-use, powerful desktop for general knowledge workers," he said. "These are people who live in e-mail, in the browser, in the office suite — not people who need a hundred different applications, but people whose lives really consist of just living in those applications."

The demo indicated it would be a good life in the new desktop, also referred to as SLED 10. Users are able to scroll miniversions of windows open on the desktop, shuffle quickly to the needed window, easily access Web sites and easily attach items to e-mails — often with drag-and-drop moves.

"It takes no time at all," Friedman said.

Friedman and Guy Lunardi, senior product manager, also demonstrated e-mail, spreadsheet and folder-sharing capabilities. They managed an iPod playlist quickly and showed how a photo could be shot, edited and put on the Internet in about 45 seconds.

Lots of little "wow" moments caught the eyes of the audience, such as "stretching" desktop icons to better see their contents or scrolling over a timeline to easily find certain photos stored on the computer. The capper was turning a flat desktop image into a virtual cube, able to be spun and manipulated to see various open windows moved over to the sides — even wrapping around the cube's corners.

However, even Linux industry insiders are unsure about the traction desktop Linux will get. From a LinuxWorld report of a conversation with Michael Dell:

...it seems that Dell's reasons for not putting more energy behind Linux on the desktop are simple and -- dare I say it? -- make a lot of sense.

According to Mr. Dell, his company simply can't afford to support all the desktop Linux options that are out there. If you think six versions of Vista are hard to keep track of, try all the various versions of Lin spire, Man driv a, Red Hat, Suse, Ubuntu, and who knows how many others. Although they all may share a common kernel, each distribution differs from the others in significant ways. And, Dell says, in such a fragmented market it's not his place to take sides.

And it's interesting to note that all the features described in the article about Novell's SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 have been long available to Apple OS-X users. With OS-X now operating on Intel processors, it's arguable that Apple, not Novell, will ultimately benefit from the Vista delay.

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