But parts from SuSE president

May 11, 2005 07:29 GMT  ·  By

Novell has announced the acquiring of Immunix, a company which produces software solutions intended for the protection of systems running Linux. The ?AppArmor" application protects both the Linux operating system and the external applications running on this platform from internal attacks, worms, viruses and other malicious codes.

AppArmor will be included into SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 and in all the versions to come. The company hasn't announced how much it will pay for Immunix, but said it prefers this solution to the partnership with a security company.

On the other hand, Novell's announcement comes shortly after Richard Seibt, president of the SuSE Linux distribution producer, gave up on his role as president of Novell for the Europe, Middle East and Asia regions. After taking over SuSE, Novell has faced numerous difficulties regarding high level staff, Siebt being the third decision factor that retreats from the company in the last months. There are rumors claiming all these deserting executives have motivated their decision with the disagreement regarding the conditions of the acquisition, and Siebt was one of the strongest contesters.

Seibt gave up his position from personal reasons, but his role regarding the merging of the companies was not well specified. Jack Messman, Novell's CEO has declared that the main task of the former executive was to supervise the integration of the SUSE components in Novell.

Together with the departure of these strong Linux supporters, the devotion and commitments taken by Novell for this operating system may be criticized and severely analyzed by experts.

The latest version of the distribution is the SUSE LINUX Professional 9.3 solution which offers advanced tools for experienced users, maintaining in the same time the simple features of the installation, but also the security settings necessary for Linux beginners.