Caldera Open Linux - Lineo and Marketing

Lineo and Marketing

In July 1999, Caldera decided on a major refocus of the embedded system portion, where Caldera's technologies fully owned were well ahead of competitor's products. These technologies included:

• Rt-Control provided UCLinux - a version of Linux for microcontrollers, such as the Motorola 68k/ColdFire line, i960, ARM7, and ETRAX CRIS chips. With these chips lacking MMU and thus unable to provide multi-tasking capabilities, uClinux is able to run full-featured in as little as 150 KB of RAM with a 1 MB ROM chip.
• FirePlug - Linux-based projects, such as their Linux firewall built on the ThinLinux product, which runs in as little as 2 MB of disk/flash storage and 8 MB RAM.
• Embedix - Lineo's flagship product that runs a complete multitasking, networked Linux operating system in 2 MB of ROM/flash and 4 MB of RAM.
• Embedix SDK and the Embedix Browser - a fully graphical internet browser for embedded systems, this was in essence the Zenotropix browser.

This combination of technologies allowed Caldera to offer a full Linux operating system with a graphical browser that could run off a floppy disk. More importantly the product was unique, and this came from the fact that Caldera's view on the Linux embedded market was differed from other vendors. All the other vendors believed that Linux was heavily fragmented and that the solution was to offer Linux features for real time OSes, that is a Linux API for some other OSes. Red Hat with its EL/IX created a kernel independent framework (API) which allowed some Linux software to run on the eCos kernel. Caldera did not agree with this assessment and believed the API was offered far more advantages and allowed for a fully hardened system, that is Caldera utilized a custom Linux kernel. Through the six companies embedded Linux company Lineo acquired, they were able to extend the same Linux technology across multiple chip architectures and add real-time capabilities. The acquisitions gave broader Linux support, from very small microcontrollers, through traditional platforms like x86, and up to high end, high availability systems.