In the third of a series of interviews by Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin, Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian (right) insisted his company is not being hurt by its association with Microsoft.

“Novell grew 200% in the SUSE Linux marketplace year-over-year from an invoicing perspective,” he said. The overall market is growing at 22% according to IDC,” and “we’re taking some market share from our competitors.

Hovsepian said Novell has “doubled down” on Mono, the .Net implementation led by Miguel de Icaza which today was renamed Duo in (of all places) Madagascar. Hovsepian talked a lot about “customer wins” — 20,000 desktops at PSA Peugeot, the State Electronics Agency in Tamil Nadu with 30,000, Credit Suisse, Nationwide and CVS — as justifying the strategy.

Again and again, Hovsepian went back to the idea of the mixed environment.

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