Linus Torvalds Visits Novell's BrainShare

Everything came up Linux today at Novell's annual BrainShare conference in Salt Lake City, where company executives proclaimed a corporate resurgence and a surprise guest touted the vendor's commitment to open source.

Although Novell CEO Jack Messman and Vice Chairman/Office of the CEO Chris Stone excited the crowd of 6,000 with talk of the future, it was Linux founder Linus Torvalds who brought the house down with a surprise visit.

"[Novell] can be the next big thing in Linux," Torvalds said sheepishly. "I think open source is the perfect way to solve technical issues."

Torvalds stopped short of an all-out endorsement of Novell's Linux strategy, leaving the cheerleading to keynote speakers Messman and Stone. And the duo didn't disappoint. They declared that Novell aims to incorporate Linux functionality into its overall enterprise and desktop offerings. The executives took shots at Microsoft and its Windows operating system.

"This year, BrainShare doesn't need no stinking Windows," Messman exclaimed, noting that the entire conference was being run on Linux. "It's all about open source now."