The site, which offers an admittedly biased opinion — Novell makes competing Linux-based operating system SLED 10 — allows users to compare the two products on performance, capabilities and cost.
“With SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, you receive over 90 percent of the functionality of Vista and Office for less than 10 percent of the price,” Novell’s site claims in its pricing section.
SLED retails for $50, while Vista will sell in stores for $299.
While both Novell and Microsoft have worked together to solve the problem of Linux/Windows interoperability, many technology pundits have said that the partnership is one of convenience, with the two companies looking for any available advantage in the battle for the next generation of operating systems.
In addition to taking on Microsoft’s relatively high price, Novell also took the Redmond, Wash.-based software firm to task on Vista’s security. The site accuses Microsoft of failing to make security a priority for the new operating system.
“There's a lot of focus on Vista because of the impending launch, so we thought it was timely to do this,” Novell spokesman Bruce Lowry said.
Despite the self-promotion, Lowry conceded that the Linux share of the desktop operating system market was “very small.”
For its part, Microsoft seems more concerned with how Vista will compare to its last big launch — Windows XP — than with any threat from Linux-based operating systems.
“Each time Microsoft puts out a piece of software, they’re competing with their own previous software,” industry analyst Matt Rosoff said. “Now, there’s not that much extra stuff in the plumbing that they can do. There’s not going to be the big, obvious leap."
To see Novell’s side-by-side comparison, click here.
