Novell Inc has canned work on developing its Linux-based Corsaire operating system into an independent product to compete with Microsoft Corp’s Windows, according to PC Week. President and chief executive Bob Frankenberg apparently took the decision while evaluating all areas of the company for its pending reorganisation in the autumn, which is expected to reveal the ‘New Novell’. But the Corsaire development team reportedly hopes to persuade Novell to spin the project off into a separate company and has appealed to chairman Ray Noorda to continue financial support – Noorda is said to have personally provided some funding for it in the past. But PC Week sources reckon some Corsaire technology could find its way into UnixWare. According to internal Novell documents, Corsaire combines the Linux 1.0 kernel with Novell DOS 7.0, and runs on Intel, PowerPC and other RISC processors. It includes an MS-DOS and Windows emulator, the Mosaic graphical front end to the Internet and a virtual desktop based on Visix Software Inc’s Looking Glass product. It was meant to be a client operating system for embedded switches, appliances and the like. One UnixWare licensee said The feeling was that the UnixWare kernel was too big for Novell to have a ‘UnixWare everywhere’ strategy like Microsoft’s ‘Windows everywhere’ strategy. But Noorda was making noises that Corsair was the product they’d lead with and fight Windows with. That was a real slap in the face for the UnixWare guys.
