In the course of a pleasant chat with Novell's Steve Harris, I'm told that IBM is company's biggest partner - even after the much-publicised boost Novell got from its Linux deal with Microsoft.

That deal, you will remember, got Novell $100 million of Linux business.

Apparently, IBM's "green mainframe" drive has caused a resurgence in mainframes, and a lot of users have decided to use Linux to get the most value out of the beasts. Harris didn't put a figure on how much business it's getting from mainframes, but he made sure I knew that Novell is king of that particular castle, claiming 80 percent of the Linux mainframe market.