OK, I was a bit suprised at first but it certainly makes sense. I have been attending Novell‘s Brainshare this week and I was walking accross the street on Wednesday to go to lunch with a friend. I was about half way accross when I noticed a large flatbead truck with a large billboard on the back coming toward me. Moving quickly to avoid being run over, I noticed a large add for Windows XP stretched across the billboard’s surface. They had also bought up most of the ad space at the Salt Lake City airport’s baggage claim area and had placed pro-microsoft ads there. Hmmm. It seems that Microsoft has taken notice of Novell’s strategy and apparently given it a large measure of validation. They wouldn’t spend money on advertising at Novell’s conference if they didn’t think Novell didn’t have a chance of winning over customers.

The truck drove around the Salt Palace all day for at least 4 of the 5 days of the conference. I really wanted to get a picture of it but my time was limited and the small ammount that I did spend looking for it was intereupted occationally by people who wanted to talk about Linux and OpenSource. It would seem that had they had the chance, Microsoft would have flown banners inside the conference itself.

I imagine that the pressure and FUD from Microsoft will only increase as Novell’s Linux products and services (as well as Linux itself) grow and become more popular. Right now, one can use Linux with Samba to fully replace an Windows NT domain controller and with Windows NT being ‘end of lifed’ by Microsoft, Linux is a very popular direction people are considering.