Novell Linux Small Business Suite 9 won the praise of PC Magazine editor Robert P. Lipschutz in a recent review. Lipschutz pronounces Novell LSBS a "surprisingly easy" "one-stop Linux solution" for small businesses, with an "enticing" price.

For small businesses looking to consolidate file sharing, print and application serving, email, data backup, and similar functions on a server, Novell LSBS offers SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, GroupWise 6.5.3, Novell eDirectory 8.7.3, Novell iManager, and common server tools like print and web servers, MySQL database, and Samba. For small businesses looking to migrate their desktop PCs to Linux, too, Novell LSBS also includes the SuSE-based Novell Linux Desktop 9, with a GroupWise client and the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite.

A beta version of ThinkFree Corp.'s web-based cross-platform office productivity suite is now available. The Java-based suite allows users to create and access Microsoft Office-compatible documents from almost any computer with Internet access.

Version 1.0 of Nvu (pronounced "N-view"), a completely Open Source WYSIWYG web-authoring tool comparable to FrontPage and Dreamweaver, is now available for download and installation on Macs, Windows boxes, and many desktop Linux distributions.

Designed to be easy for non-technical users, Nvu 1.0's notable features include:

* WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get") page editing
* Integrated file management via FTP
* Support for forms, tables, and templates
* Tabbed editing for working on multiple pages at once, and switching between WYSIWYG Editing Mode and HTML

Official binaries of Nvu 1.0 are available for Linspire 5.0, SuSE Linux 9.2, Mandrake Linux 10.0, Fedora Core 2 and 3, Debian Linux unstable ("sid"), and MEPIS. The source code is also available.

In an op-ed column at eWEEK, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols address the question, "What's the best Linux desktop?" There's no single answer, Vaughan-Nichols says. "It really depends on what you want to do, but here are three of my favorites and the jobs they're most suited for." Vaughan-Nichols writes . . .

About five minutes after Linus Torvalds first let the world know about Linux 0.01 back in the dawn of time, aka Aug. 25, 1991, the first fight over which was the best Linux distribution began.

I kid. The never-ending fight over which is the best Linux distribution didn't begin in earnest, as I recall it, until 1994, with the arrival of Red Hat Linux. Then, as now, there's just something about Red Hat Linux that's like waving a red flag at a bull. Folks just seem to love it or hate it.

Salt Lake City -- While Microsoft still has the monopoly on the desktop market with its Windows operating system, Novell is readying new features and functionality that it believes will propel its Novell Linux Desktop offering into the mass market.

The current Novell Linux Desktop 9, which was released last November, is targeted not at the mass market but rather at those customers with more contained workloads.

But all of that is set to change with the next version of the product, Novell Linux Desktop 10, scheduled for release next year.