Red Hat continues to demonstrate its dominance of the enterprise Linux market. The company reported a blow-out third quarter, with total revenue of $135.4 million, an increase of 28% from the year ago quarter and 6% from the prior quarter. Subscription revenue was $115.7 million, up 30% year-over-year and 6% sequentially.

American Linux distributor Red Hat has announced its first quarter financial results, which show an increase in total revenue and subscription revenue by 20 per cent over same quarter last year

Novell Wednesday reported the net income loss for the third quarter of its 2007 fiscal year fell by nearly 50% compared to the same quarter last year, and the company said revenue was up nearly 3% to $243 million.

Novell has reported a year-on-year fall in second-quarter revenue, but a small rise in profit as a result of a 25 per cent growth in Linux product sales.

We reported recently on Red Hat’s revenue growth and deferred revenue. One of the things I have been looking at recently is the slowdown in Red Hat’s growth in recent years, and the opportunities that the company has to improve that growth.

In a time when Microsoft is feeling the full impact of the global economic downturn, the open-source Linux operating system is flourishing.

IDC is out with a new report forecasting Linux revenue from 2009-2013. According to a post on the data, from Novell CMO John Dragoon, in 2008, the Linux vendor community saw a 23.4 percent growth in revenue.

Novell's Linux business is keeping the company buoyant in trying economic times, the company's third-quarter earnings indicate. On Thursday, the software maker published its third-quarter results, which revealed that revenue from its Linux platform products had increased 22 percent, year-on-year, to US$38 million.

At the close of trading Thursday, Microsoft announced the results for its second quarter of fiscal year 2010, which ended December 31, 2009. Revenue of $19.02 billion, a 14 percent increase from the same period of the prior year, set a new a record for the company.