Half a million German students choose SUSE on the desktop

Quick: If I were to tell you that a German educational institution selected Novell SUSE Linux for its desktop and server needs, would you be terribly surprised?

No? Me neither. The Germans and SUSE (and Linux in general, for that matter) are like peas in a pod, but it’s always cool to see students getting their hands on Linux and open source technology.

From today’s Novell press announcement:

Novell today announced that state universities across the Federal State of North Rhine Westphalia in Germany have selected Novell for their critical IT infrastructure systems. The agreement will give 560,000 students and employees across 33 universities access to enterprise management and Linux services from Novell, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.

Novell is working closely with each of the universities of North Rhine Westphalia to customize solutions to meet their individual needs. This deal covers a wide range of Linux and enterprise management technologies from Novell, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, Novell Open Enterprise Server, Novell Identity Manager and Novell ZENworks. To date, 10 universities have already developed plans to implement Identity Manager to manage student, faculty and employee identities. Thirteen universities will use Novell ZENworks to manage their complex heterogeneous IT infrastructures, while nine universities are implementing Novell GroupWise for collaboration. On the Linux front, 15 universities to date have committed to deploying SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.

The addition of more than half a million new SUSE users means that 40% of all German university students will have access to Linux and management applications from Novell. Not too shabby.
Now we’ll all just wait until some enterprising young columnist touts this news as the year of the Linux desktop. It will be aaaaaany minute now…