"And this is kind of the opposite of what's usually done in open source, because it's usually done in open source where the programmer is the king. He has total control, right? Whatever code he happens to write late at night becomes the software, and up until now that's been software that's really oriented toward geeks, you know? And geeks are nice, but there are a lot of nice nongeek people in the world, I've heard. . . . So to do that sort of design-first mentality of the desktop, I think it shows," Friedman said.

As usual, Novell speakers got in a few digs on their rival, Microsoft. Several referred to a USA Today story about Microsoft pushing back the rollout of a consumer version of its new Windows Vista desktop operating system — an expected competitor for SLED 10 — until early next year.

The story said Vista was originally scheduled to be ready by the end of 2004. "The last time I checked, it was 2006," John Dragoon, chief marketing officer for Novell, said to crowd laughter Wednesday.

The morning's keynote presentation also featured demonstrations of Novell's identification, resource and access management products, plus humorous video parodies of television shows "24" and "Lost" showing tech tribulations in the corporate world.

About 6,000 people are attending BrainShare, which ends Friday, to learn more about Massachusetts-based Novell and its products. About one-third of the company's work force is in Provo.

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com