Networking giant Novell bought Digital Research and it's DR-DOS line with a view to using DR's product line as a lever in their comprehensive strategy to break the Microsoft monopoly.

The planned DR-DOS 7.0, intended to trump Microsoft's troubled MS-DOS 6.0, was repeatedly delayed. When it eventually arrived, renamed Novell DOS 7, it was a disappointment. It was larger and introduced many new bugs, and the main functional addition was Novell's second attempt at a peer-to-peer networking system, Personal Netware.

Novell DOS 7 required several bug-fix releases and was not completely stable when the next development occurred. Eventually, Novell sold the product line off to Caldera Systems in 1996.