When the next generation of SUSE Linux arrives, and goodness knows when that will be - Novell doesn't even want to talk about an ETA until the end of this year - but it says that when it does get here one of its avatars will be as an appliance, supported by a new toolkit that builds specialized images.

There will also a new embedded version and optimized versions for specific ISV stacks.

Interesting, Novell specifically calls out Solaris and only Solaris as the horse to beat. It wants SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 to meet or beat Sun's performance benchmarks.

Xen 3.3 virtualization is supposed to be available as an integrated component of the operating system, standalone or embedded. It should support cross-platform virtualization and consolidate Linux, Windows and NetWare servers.

Novell is also promising to make use of its relationship with Microsoft on the interoperability front. It plans to include the Mono 2.0 development framework in SLES 11, which will let users run .NET applications on Linux. Mono 2.0 includes .NET 3.5 support as well as a .NET 2.0 profile.