A friend called me on Friday to ask what I thought about Novell. "Does it have a chance?" he asked?

The answer is increasingly, "Yes."

I never would have thought I'd be saying that, but whatever the cause of Novell's resurgence, it feels like the company is making a serious comeback. Yes, it has yet to displace its competition: Ubuntu has more momentum but still lacks a winning revenue model that may hamper its transition from community standard to enterprise standard, while Red Hat continues to barrel forward yet doesn't feel as invincible as before.

But Novell's progress in its Linux business is nothing to sneeze at.