Caldera Open Linux - Caldera Network Desktop

Caldera Network Desktop

At this point Ransom Love and Noorda took note of the technologies that Caldera put together. Specifically:

• Caldera was built on the Linux kernel which ran on x86, PowerPC and Alpha architectures.
• Its wide area networking was far more advanced than the Microsoft networked OSes at the time (Windows for Workgroups and Windows NT 3.51), due to its being Unix-like.
• Caldera included a version of Novell's IPX network protocol and a client for Netware .
• The Willows API code written for the Caldera OS would run on Unix, Microsoft Windows, and Apple Macintosh, as well as Caldera itself.

More than just a component for Novell, Caldera has assembled the components needed to create a VAR platform. Caldera faced a chicken and egg problem. OEM VAR applications often depended crucially on other company's commercial applications. Since these other applications hadn't been ported to Linux yet they couldn't meaningfully port their own applications. Caldera responded by creating a binary applications package which allowed Linux to run Unixware and OpenServer applications, the Linux Application Binary Interface (ABI) project, and assisting SCO in creating the Linux kernel Personalities. Linux Kernel Personalities was worked on to bring Linux application compatibility to SCO Unix (formerly UnixWare) and OpenServer. "The idea was to enable developers to write for both Unix and Linux with a common Application Programming Interface (API) and common Application Binary Interface (ABI). That way developers didn't have to work so hard, and Unix users, the client base we inherited from SCO, could run Linux applications."

Caldera also supported Alan Cox in his work on SMP. If Linux destroyed the Unix base on Intel then Sun Microsystems wouldn't have a low-end Unix path. This point becomes more interesting in light of SCO's litigation 8 years later. That is IBM was not the company involved in the SMP work and moreover the company most directly involved is the company that later became the SCO group, essentially SCO suing IBM for work it itself did.

During 1996, Caldera continued to be a valuable player, for example, on May 23, 1996, at the Linux Kongress in Berlin, Germany, Caldera announced its plans to obtain POSIX and FIPS Certifications and the X/Open brand for UNIX 95 and XPG4 BASE 95 for the Linux operating system kernel.