Novell announced on Wednesday that SuSE Linux, the version of the open-source operating system it acquired earlier this month, has passed a new level of security certification.
In August 2003, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) was certified to meet Evaluation Assurance Level 2 (EAL2) of an internationally adopted set of government security requirements called the Common Criteria. As expected, Novell said on Wednesday at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo that the operating system has passed the more stringent EAL3 tests.
The certification will apply to the SLES software running on all of IBM's server lines -- its zSeries mainframes, xSeries Intel-based servers, iSeries midrange servers, pSeries Unix servers and the eServer 325 that uses Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron processors.
Red Hat, the company that sells the most widely used version of Linux, announced in February it was working with Oracle to achieve EAL2 certification by the end of 2003, but the company hasn't announced that approval yet.
In December, an Oracle representative said the Red Hat certification was expected by mid-January.
Red Hat and SuSE are both IBM business partners, but in New York Big Blue has been showing warm ties with SuSE. Jim Stallings, IBM's general manager for Linux, praised SuSE at an event for SuSE business partners on the eve of the Linux show.
"We've seen phenomenal strength in their technology leadership. They were the first company that scaled to eight-ways," he said, meaning that SuSE beat out rivals with a version of Linux that could effectively run on a powerful eight-processor server. SuSE "goes to market faster than any of their competitors," he added.
Though SuSE lagged Red Hat in market share, it supported all IBM's server lines much earlier than Red Hat, which reached that point in October. IBM is slated to make a $50m investment in Novell now that the company has completed its $210m acquisition of SuSE.
