After Novell's announcement this week that it plans to acquire Ximian, industry observers might be forgiven a collective "Huh?"

At first glance, the two seem to be the least-compatible of couples. Novell is first and foremost a server company; Ximian is primarily a Linux desktop company best-known for Linux's GNOME visual interface.

Novell has been turning rapidly into an open-source patron-specifically on the server side. In April, the company announced it would provide a Linux version of its network services (such as file and printer sharing and directory services) as part of its next major release of NetWare. And the company has made the Apache Web server and MySQL database part of its NetWare server software.

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