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151-669: Caldera International, Inc. , earlier Caldera Systems , was an American software company that existed from 1998 to 2002 and developed and sold Linux - and Unix -based operating system products. Caldera Systems was created in August 1998 as a spinoff of Caldera, Inc. , with Ransom Love as its CEO. It focused on selling Caldera OpenLinux , a high-end Linux distribution aimed at business customers that included features it developed, such as an easy-to-use, graphical installer and graphical and web-based system administration tools, as well as features from bundled proprietary software . Caldera Systems
302-498: A Microsoft Windows partition. Industry writer Hal Plotkin praised Caldera as a product development company and noted that OpenLinux won several industry awards, including 1999 product of the year from Linux Journal . In addition to other people's applications, Caldera Systems created many Linux extensions to fill voids where no other commercial company was. Caldera Systems created a full-featured GUI system administration tool called Caldera Open Administration System (COAS) that
453-527: A Wayland compositor such as Sway , KDE 's KWin , or GNOME 's Mutter ), a desktop environment (most commonly GNOME , KDE Plasma , or Xfce ), a sound server (usually either PulseAudio or more recently PipeWire ), and other related programs may be included or installed by the user. Typically, most of the included software is free and open-source software – made available both as binary for convenience and as source code to allow for modifying it. A distro may also include proprietary software that
604-431: A dual boot setup, Caldera shipped with PowerQuest 's PartitionMagic to allow their customers to non-destructively repartition their hard disks . This approach led to a debate about the purity of Linux-based products. Red Hat CEO Bob Young said in 1999, "One where you might see a problem is Caldera, because they see part of their value added in proprietary tools they have licensed from third parties." In response,
755-472: A high-level language implementation of Unix made its porting to different computer platforms easier. Due to an earlier antitrust case forbidding it from entering the computer business, AT&T licensed the operating system's source code as a trade secret to anyone who asked. As a result, Unix grew quickly and became widely adopted by academic institutions and businesses. In 1984, AT&T divested itself of its regional operating companies , and
906-424: A minimalist functionality, while more elaborate window managers such as FVWM , Enlightenment , or Window Maker provide more features such as a built-in taskbar and themes , but are still lightweight when compared to desktop environments. Desktop environments include window managers as part of their standard installations, such as Mutter (GNOME), KWin (KDE), or Xfwm (xfce), although users may choose to use
1057-505: A solution stack such as LAMP . The source code of Linux may be used, modified, and distributed commercially or non-commercially by anyone under the terms of its respective licenses, such as the GNU General Public License (GPL). The license means creating novel distributions is permitted by anyone and is easier than it would be for an operating system such as MacOS or Microsoft Windows . The Linux kernel, for example,
1208-439: A CD with only a small amount of data on it. New users tend to begin by partitioning a hard drive in order to keep their previously installed operating system. The Linux distribution can then be installed on its own separate partition without affecting previously saved data. In a Live CD setup, the computer boots the entire operating system from CD without first installing it on the computer's hard disk. Many distributions have
1359-525: A Caldera Systems executive expressed the company's philosophy: "We have produced a product that combines the best of open-source and commercial packages; we are doing Linux for business. We do add to it commercial packages that allow business users to easily integrate it." Caldera OpenLinux was also available on a retail basis, in the form of a CD-ROM for installing Linux on an IBM PC compatible machine that sold for US$ 49. OpenLinux 2.2 , released in April 1999,
1510-520: A Live CD installer , where the computer boots the operating system from the disk, and it can then be installed on the computer's hard disk, providing a seamless transition from the OS running from the CD to the OS running from the hard disk. Both servers and personal computers that come with Linux already installed are available from vendors including Hewlett-Packard , Dell and System76 . On embedded devices, Linux
1661-422: A common console for a unified user experience. As Ransom Love said, "Volution is a complex and extensive platform". In January 2001, Caldera Systems first shipped Volution Manager, a browser-based systems administration solution. Intended for service providers and corporate accounts, it was based around OpenLDAP and Novell eDirectory . It featured some sophisticated functionality, but its initial user interface
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#17330860652571812-466: A competing OS, agrees that "Linux wasn't designed, it evolved", but considers this to be a limitation, proposing that some features, especially those related to security, cannot be evolved into, "this is not a biological system at the end of the day, it's a software system." A Linux-based system is a modular Unix-like operating system, deriving much of its basic design from principles established in Unix during
1963-971: A different window manager if preferred. Wayland is a display server protocol intended as a replacement for the X11 protocol; as of 2022 , it has received relatively wide adoption. Unlike X11, Wayland does not need an external window manager and compositing manager. Therefore, a Wayland compositor takes the role of the display server, window manager, and compositing manager. Weston is the reference implementation of Wayland, while GNOME's Mutter and KDE's KWin are being ported to Wayland as standalone display servers. Enlightenment has already been successfully ported since version 19. Additionally, many window managers have been made for Wayland, such as Sway or Hyprland, as well as other graphical utilities such as Waybar or Rofi. Linux currently has two modern kernel-userspace APIs for handling video input devices: V4L2 API for video streams and radio, and DVB API for digital TV reception. Due to
2114-512: A distribution, an administrator may create a "distributionless" installation. It is possible to build such systems from scratch, avoiding distributions altogether. One needs a way to generate the first binaries until the system is self-hosting . This can be done via compilation on another system capable of building binaries for the intended target (possibly by cross-compilation ). For example, see Linux From Scratch . In broad terms, Linux distributions may be: The diversity of Linux distributions
2265-484: A large write-down of the assets acquired from SCO, as they could no longer be accounted for as having the value they were originally thought to possess. For the fiscal year ending on October 31, 2001, Caldera International reported a loss of $ 131.4 million based on revenues of $ 40.4 million (the loss included a total amount of write-down and other non-cash and restructuring charges of $ 98.6 million). Linux Linux ( / ˈ l ɪ n ʊ k s / , LIN -uuks )
2416-676: A loss of $ 7.9 million on revenue of $ 1.05 million, and for its 1999 fiscal year, it had a loss of $ 9.3 million on revenue of $ 3.05 million. However, the industry saw promise in Linux as a solution for businesses, and in the latter half of 1999 a "Linux hysteria" had erupted in the stock market, with first Red Hat in August 1999 and then Cobalt Networks and VA Linux in November and December 1999 having experienced huge jumps in value during their first day each of trading. On January 10, 2000, three things happened, all of which were coincidental. A settlement to
2567-588: A new SLS-based distribution, Slackware , was released by Patrick Volkerding . Also dissatisfied with SLS, Ian Murdock set to create a free distribution by founding Debian in August 1993, with first public BETA released in January 1994 and first stable version in June 1996. Users were attracted to Linux distributions as alternatives to the DOS and Microsoft Windows operating systems on IBM PC compatible computers, Mac OS on
2718-464: A package are present (and either notify the user to install them, or install them automatically). The package can also be provided as source code to be compiled on the system. Most distributions install packages, including the kernel and other core operating system components, in a predetermined configuration. A few now require or permit configuration adjustments at first install time. This makes installation less daunting, particularly for new users, but
2869-450: A parasite", to which Love took umbrage, responding, "Did Richard Stallman ever invest £50m in Linux? We did. I have been involved in the Linux community since my time at Novell in 1994. … I am not a greedy capitalist. I am only a businessman. … You can't call our business model parasitic. We add value to Linux, so it can become successful. … I know that the open source movement has no clue about marketing, they underestimate it." United Linux
3020-404: A place in server installations such as the popular LAMP application stack. The use of Linux distributions in home and enterprise desktops has been growing. Linux distributions have also become popular in the netbook market, with many devices shipping with customized Linux distributions installed, and Google releasing their own ChromeOS designed for netbooks. Linux's greatest success in
3171-450: A popular CLI shell. The graphical user interface (or GUI) used by most Linux systems is built on top of an implementation of the X Window System . More recently, the Linux community has sought to advance to Wayland as the new display server protocol, in place of X11. Many other open-source software projects contribute to Linux systems. Installed components of a Linux system include the following: The user interface , also known as
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#17330860652573322-404: A proprietary operating system or by translating proprietary API calls (e.g., calls to Microsoft's Win32 or DirectX APIs) into native Linux API calls. A virtual machine can also be used to run a proprietary OS (like Microsoft Windows) on top of Linux. Computer hardware is usually sold with an operating system other than Linux already installed by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM). In
3473-510: A series of Authorized Linux Education Centers around the globe that would train successful students towards doing well in Linux Professional Institute Certification Programs. Beginning courses trained on several difficult Linux distributions as well as Caldera OpenLinux, while more advanced courses focused on OpenLinux only (the name OpenLinux tended to annoy other Linux distributions, suggesting as it did that
3624-481: A significant business around Linux distributions. The free software licenses , on which the various software packages of a distribution built on the Linux kernel are based, explicitly accommodate and encourage commercialization; the relationship between a Linux distribution as a whole and individual vendors may be seen as symbiotic . One common business model of commercial suppliers is charging for support, especially for business users. A number of companies also offer
3775-493: A specialized business version of their distribution, which adds proprietary support packages and tools to administer higher numbers of installations or to simplify administrative tasks. Another business model is to give away the software to sell hardware. This used to be the norm in the computer industry, with operating systems such as CP/M , Apple DOS , and versions of the classic Mac OS before 7.6 freely copyable (but not modifiable). As computer hardware standardized throughout
3926-461: A specific instruction set , while some (such as Gentoo ) are distributed mostly in source code form and must be built before installation. Linus Torvalds developed the Linux kernel and distributed its first version, 0.01, in 1991. Linux was initially distributed as source code only, and later as a pair of downloadable floppy disk images: one bootable and containing the Linux kernel itself, and
4077-713: A specific application or service. Examples of packages are a library for handling the PNG image format, a collection of fonts, and a web browser . The package is typically provided as compiled code, with installation and removal of packages handled by a package management system (PMS) rather than a simple file archiver . Each package intended for such a PMS contains meta-information such as its description, version number, and its dependencies (other packages it requires to run). The package management system evaluates this meta-information to allow package searches, perform automatic upgrades to newer versions, and to check that all dependencies of
4228-482: A strong value add for Caldera International products and could often sell Red Hat Enterprise Linux instead. The Volution program was created out of the desire to create a layer of functionality on top of Linux, and Open UNIX 8 Linux Kernel Personality, that would add value to the operating systems offerings. It would end up having four main components: Volution Manager, Volution Messaging Server, Volution Online, and Volution Authentication Server, with an effort to build
4379-972: A system's software from one central location. A distribution is largely driven by its developer and user communities. Some vendors develop and fund their distributions on a volunteer basis, Debian being a well-known example. Others maintain a community version of their commercial distributions, as Red Hat does with Fedora , and SUSE does with openSUSE . In many cities and regions, local associations known as Linux User Groups (LUGs) seek to promote their preferred distribution and by extension free software. They hold meetings and provide free demonstrations, training, technical support, and operating system installation to new users. Many Internet communities also provide support to Linux users and developers. Most distributions and free software / open-source projects have IRC chatrooms or newsgroups . Online forums are another means of support, with notable examples being Unix & Linux Stack Exchange , LinuxQuestions.org and
4530-402: A user may interact with the application; however, certain extensions of the X Window System are not capable of working over the network. Several X display servers exist, with the reference implementation, X.Org Server , being the most popular. Server distributions might provide a command-line interface for developers and administrators, but provide a custom interface for end-users, designed for
4681-453: A vast body of work and may include both kernel modules and user applications and libraries. Linux vendors and communities combine and distribute the kernel, GNU components, and non-GNU components, with additional package management software in the form of Linux distributions. Many developers of open-source software agree that the Linux kernel was not designed but rather evolved through natural selection . Torvalds considers that although
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4832-470: A week before the acquisition announcement). Traditional SCO users were leery of the move, but Love tried to reassure them that the SCO Unix operating systems would continue on: "Why would we buy it to destroy what we buy? That wouldn't make any sense." There were hurdles to be overcome, including a fair amount of enmity for SCO within the Linux community. A major question became whether Caldera Systems would make
4983-416: Is a Linux distribution that can be booted from removable storage media such as optical discs or USB flash drives , instead of being installed on and booted from a hard disk drive . The portability of installation-free distributions makes them advantageous for applications such as demonstrations, borrowing someone else's computer, rescue operations, or as installation media for a standard distribution. When
5134-757: Is a Linux distribution; others, such as Google engineer Patrick Brady, disagree by noting the lack of support for many GNU tools in Android, including glibc . Other Linux-kernel-based operating systems include Tizen , Mer / Sailfish OS , KaiOS and Amazon's Kindle firmware . Lightweight Linux distributions are those that have been designed with support for older hardware in mind, allowing older hardware to still be used productively, or, for maximum possible speed in newer hardware by leaving more resources available for use by applications. Examples include Tiny Core Linux , Puppy Linux and Slitaz . Other distributions target specific niches, such as: The Free Standards Group
5285-497: Is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel , an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds . Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution (distro), which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries — many of which are provided by the GNU Project — to create a complete operating system. Many Linux distributions use
5436-496: Is about 3.67%. Many Linux distributions provide an installation system akin to that provided with other modern operating systems. Other distributions, including Gentoo Linux , provide only the binaries of a basic kernel, compilation tools, and an installer; the installer compiles all the requested software for the specific architecture of the user's computer, using these tools and the software's source code. Distributions are normally segmented into packages . Each package contains
5587-616: Is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro, if distributed on its own, is often obtained via a website intended specifically for the purpose. Distros have been designed for a wide variety of systems ranging from personal computers (for example, Linux Mint ) to servers (for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux ) and from embedded devices (for example, OpenWrt ) to supercomputers (for example, Rocks Cluster Distribution ). A distro typically includes many components in addition to
5738-531: Is an organization formed by major software and hardware vendors that aims to improve interoperability between different distributions. Among their proposed standards are the Linux Standard Base , which defines a common ABI and packaging system for Linux, and the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard which recommends a standard filenaming chart, notably the basic directory names found on the root of
5889-671: Is due to technical, organizational, and philosophical variation among vendors and users. The permissive licensing of free software means that users with sufficient knowledge and interest can customize any existing distribution, or design one to suit their own needs. Rolling Linux distributions are kept current using small and frequent updates . The terms partially rolling and partly rolling (along with synonyms semi-rolling and half-rolling ), fully rolling , truly rolling and optionally rolling are sometimes used by software developers and users. Repositories of rolling distributions usually contain very recent software releases —often
6040-562: Is licensed under the GPLv2, with an exception for system calls that allows code that calls the kernel via system calls not to be licensed under the GPL. Because of the dominance of Linux-based Android on smartphones , Linux, including Android, has the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems as of May 2022 . Linux is, as of March 2024 , used by around 4 percent of desktop computers . The Chromebook , which runs
6191-489: Is not always acceptable. For specific requirements, much software must be carefully configured to be useful, to work correctly with other software, or to be secure, and local administrators are often obliged to spend time reviewing and reconfiguring it. Some (but not all) distributions go to considerable lengths to adjust and customize the software they include, and some provide configuration tools to help users do so. By obtaining and installing everything normally provided in
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6342-545: Is not available in source code form, such as a device driver binary . A distro may be described as a particular assortment of application and utility software (various GNU tools and libraries, for example), packaged with the Linux kernel in such a way that its capabilities meet users' needs. The software is usually adapted to the distribution and then combined into software packages by the distribution's maintainers. The software packages are available online in repositories , which are storage locations usually distributed around
6493-424: Is often referred to as "distro hopping". Virtual machine software such as VirtualBox and VMware Workstation virtualize hardware allowing users to test live media on a virtual machine without installing to the real system. Some websites like DistroWatch offer lists of distributions, and link to screenshots of operating systems as a way to get a first impression of various distributions. Some distributions let
6644-513: Is sometimes possible on closely related distributions. There are several ways to install a Linux distribution. The most common method of installing Linux is by booting from a live USB memory stick , which can be created by using a USB image writer application and the ISO image, which can be downloaded from various Linux distribution websites. DVD disks, CD disks, network installations and even other hard drives can also be used as "installation media". In
6795-403: Is that the Linux kernel and other components are free and open-source software. Linux is not the only such operating system, although it is by far the most widely used. Some free and open-source software licenses are based on the principle of copyleft , a kind of reciprocity: any work derived from a copyleft piece of software must also be copyleft itself. The most common free software license,
6946-577: Is the Bourne-Again Shell (bash), originally developed for the GNU Project, other shells such as Zsh are also used. Most low-level Linux components, including various parts of the userland , use the CLI exclusively. The CLI is particularly suited for automation of repetitive or delayed tasks and provides very simple inter-process communication . On desktop systems, the most popular user interfaces are
7097-468: Is typically built into the firmware and is highly tailored to the system. This includes routers , automation controls, smart home devices , video game consoles , televisions (Samsung and LG smart TVs ), automobiles (Tesla, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, and Toyota), and spacecraft ( Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon crew capsule, and the Ingenuity Mars helicopter). The Unix operating system
7248-462: Is typically held in the device's firmware and may or may not be consumer-accessible. Anaconda , one of the more popular installers, is used by Red Hat Enterprise Linux , Fedora (which uses the Fedora Media Writer ) and other distributions to simplify the installation process. Debian, Ubuntu and many others use Debian-Installer . The process of constantly switching between distributions
7399-415: Is used on a wide variety of devices including PCs, workstations , mainframes and embedded systems . Linux is the predominant operating system for servers and is also used on all of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers . When combined with Android , which is Linux-based and designed for smartphones , they have the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems . The Linux kernel
7550-488: The Caldera v. Microsoft suit over DR-DOS was announced, with Microsoft paying former parent company Caldera, Inc. an amount estimated at $ 275 million (which turned out to be $ 280 million). Caldera Systems received a $ 30 million private equity investment from a group of companies that included Sun Microsystems , Novell , Citrix , Santa Cruz Operation , Chicago Venture Partners , and Egan-Managed Capital , with
7701-529: The Apple Macintosh , and proprietary versions of Unix . Most early adopters were familiar with Unix from work or school. They embraced Linux distributions for their low (or absent) cost, and the availability of the source code for most or all of their software. As of 2024, Linux has become more popular in server and embedded devices markets than in the desktop market. It is used in approximately 58.9% of web servers; its current operating system market share
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#17330860652577852-487: The Free Software Foundation and wrote the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) in 1989. By the early 1990s, many of the programs required in an operating system (such as libraries, compilers , text editors , a command-line shell , and a windowing system ) were completed, although low-level elements such as device drivers , daemons , and the kernel , called GNU Hurd , were stalled and incomplete. Minix
8003-736: The GNU toolchain , which includes the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and the GNU Build System . Amongst others, GCC provides compilers for Ada , C , C++ , Go and Fortran . Many programming languages have a cross-platform reference implementation that supports Linux, for example PHP , Perl , Ruby , Python , Java , Go , Rust and Haskell . First released in 2003, the LLVM project provides an alternative cross-platform open-source compiler for many languages. Proprietary compilers for Linux include
8154-470: The GUI shells , packaged together with extensive Desktop environments , such as KDE Plasma , GNOME , MATE , Cinnamon , LXDE , Pantheon , and Xfce , though a variety of additional user interfaces exist. Most popular user interfaces are based on the X Window System, often simply called "X". It provides network transparency and permits a graphical application running on one system to be displayed on another where
8305-740: The Intel C++ Compiler , Sun Studio , and IBM XL C/C++ Compiler . BASIC is available in procedural form from QB64 , PureBasic , Yabasic , GLBasic , Basic4GL , XBasic , wxBasic , SdlBasic , and Basic-256 , as well as object oriented through Gambas , FreeBASIC , B4X, Basic for Qt , Phoenix Object Basic, NS Basic , ProvideX, Chipmunk Basic , RapidQ and Xojo . Pascal is implemented through GNU Pascal , Free Pascal , and Virtual Pascal , as well as graphically via Lazarus , PascalABC.NET , or Delphi using FireMonkey (previously through Borland Kylix ). Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro )
8456-590: The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO). The much larger, merged company changed its name to Caldera International when the deal closed in May 2001. Caldera International sought to shape SCO's UnixWare product (renamed Open UNIX) to present a unified view of Unix and Linux that could satisfy high-end business needs and take advantage of SCO's large reseller channel. The Volution suite of higher-layer solutions for system management, mail and messaging, and authentication also had
8607-476: The shell , is either a command-line interface (CLI), a graphical user interface (GUI), or controls attached to the associated hardware, which is common for embedded systems. For desktop systems, the default user interface is usually graphical, although the CLI is commonly available through terminal emulator windows or on a separate virtual console . CLI shells are text-based user interfaces, which use text for both input and output. The dominant shell used in Linux
8758-425: The software development process , standard releases require significant development effort to keep old versions up-to-date by propagating bug fixes back to the newest branch, versus focusing on the newest development branch . Also, unlike rolling releases, standard releases require more than one code branch to be developed and maintained, which increases the workload of the software developers and maintainers. On
8909-399: The 1970s and 1980s. Such a system uses a monolithic kernel , the Linux kernel, which handles process control, networking, access to the peripherals , and file systems . Device drivers are either integrated directly with the kernel or added as modules that are loaded while the system is running. The GNU userland is a key part of most systems based on the Linux kernel, with Android being
9060-406: The 1980s, it became more difficult for hardware manufacturers to profit from this tactic, as the OS would run on any manufacturer's computer that shared the same architecture. Most programming languages support Linux either directly or through third-party community based ports . The original development tools used for building both Linux applications and operating system programs are found within
9211-400: The 1990s, Linux distributions were installed using sets of floppy disks but this has been abandoned by all major distributions. By the 2000s many distributions offered CD and DVD sets with the vital packages on the first disc and less important packages on later ones. Some distributions, such as Debian also enabled installation over a network after booting from either a set of floppy disks or
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#17330860652579362-596: The Best Open Source Project Award at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in February 2002. That, combined with experience in the Kerberos authentication protocol and the difficulties of Windows–Unix integration, led Caldera International into research and development of an overall authentication solution that would find its place among Microsoft Active Directory , LDAP , Kerberos, and WBEM. The product of this work
9513-505: The Caldera K.K. ( カルデラ株式会社 ) subsidiary, directed by Makoto Asoh, who had previously run Nihon SCO, in Tokyo, Japan, which had been one of two SCO subsidiaries in that country. Overall, SCO had an infrastructure presence of some kind in 80 countries, whereas Caldera Systems had always been largely domestic, thus in part the rationale for the name change. "Unifying Unix with Linux for Business" became
9664-567: The DOS and embedded business. The shell company Caldera, Inc., remained responsible for the lawsuit only. Caldera Systems was headquartered in Orem, Utah , and was headed by co-founder Ransom Love as President and CEO. Caldera Deutschland GmbH, based in Erlangen, Germany , served as their Linux development center. Drew Spencer joined in 1999 and became the company's Chief Technology Officer. The company targeted
9815-663: The GNU General Public License (GPL), is a form of copyleft and is used for the Linux kernel and many of the components from the GNU Project. Linux-based distributions are intended by developers for interoperability with other operating systems and established computing standards. Linux systems adhere to POSIX, SUS , LSB , ISO , and ANSI standards where possible, although to date only one Linux distribution has been POSIX.1 certified, Linux-FT. Free software projects, although developed through collaboration , are often produced independently of each other. The fact that
9966-534: The German LST Software GmbH and its LST Power Linux distribution, which was made the basis of their following product Caldera OpenLinux (COL). Caldera, Inc. inherited a lawsuit against Microsoft when it purchased DR-DOS from Novell in 1996. This Caldera v. Microsoft action related to Caldera's claims of monopolization , illegal tying , exclusive dealing , and tortious interference by Microsoft. On September 2, 1998, Caldera, Inc. announced
10117-460: The Linux kernel, key components that make up a distribution may include a display server (windowing system) , a package manager , a bootloader and the Bash shell . Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free and open-source software collaboration. While originally developed for x86 based personal computers , it has since been ported to more platforms than any other operating system, and
10268-647: The Linux kernel-based ChromeOS , dominates the US K–12 education market and represents nearly 20 percent of sub-$ 300 notebook sales in the US. Linux is the leading operating system on servers (over 96.4% of the top one million web servers' operating systems are Linux), leads other big iron systems such as mainframe computers , and is used on all of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers (as of November 2017 , having gradually displaced all competitors). Linux also runs on embedded systems , i.e., devices whose operating system
10419-605: The Linux kernel. On July 3, 1991, to implement Unix system calls , Linus Torvalds attempted unsuccessfully to obtain a digital copy of the POSIX standards documentation with a request to the comp.os.minix newsgroup . After not finding the POSIX documentation, Torvalds initially resorted to determining system calls from SunOS documentation owned by the university for use in operating its Sun Microsystems server. He also learned some system calls from Tanenbaum's Minix text. Torvalds began
10570-461: The Linux kernel. Commonly, it includes a package manager , an init system (such as systemd , OpenRC , or runit ), GNU tools and libraries , documentation, IP network configuration utilities, the getty TTY setup program, and many more. To provide a desktop experience (most commonly the Mesa userspace graphics drivers) a display server (the most common being the X.org Server , or, more recently,
10721-686: The Linux-based software business with its Linux distribution named Caldera OpenLinux, and the Caldera Systems business plan stressed the importance of corporate training, support, and services. Towards this end they created a professional certification program for Linux as well as for the KDE desktop that the Caldera Systems distribution used. In doing so they worked with the Linux Professional Institute in developing class materials and created
10872-821: The SCO-acquired Unix source code open source. Ransom Love initially said, "While we're having to look carefully at the licensing, we're going to open up the [UnixWare] source as much as possible, and at least some of it will be under" the GNU Public Licence . But there was pushback on the idea from the UnixWare staff in New Jersey, and in addition the license issues involved proved formidable. Love later said, "at first we wanted to open-source all of Unix's code, but we quickly found that even though we owned it, it was, and still is, full of other companies' copyrights. The challenge
11023-540: The Sun "Classic JVM" for SCO Unix platforms that begun under SCO was completed with Caldera International. Caldera Systems was also involved in several Java Specification Requests , including being the specification lead for JSR 140, Service Location Protocol API for Java, and participating in the JSR 48 WBEM Services Specification . Caldera Systems had not been profitable; for the company's 1998 fiscal year, ending on October 31, it had
11174-622: The Volution Messaging Server, which was released in late 2001 for use on Caldera OpenLinux and Open UNIX 8 with LKP. It offered shared calendaring and scheduling options, SSL support for e-mail, simple configuration, and integration with Microsoft Outlook . However, there were already a number of mail servers available for Linux and none of them had taken off in the business market. Caldera Systems, and then Caldera International, had substantial experience with Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM), and its OpenWBEM implementation won
11325-466: The beginning, it was rather casually hacked on by huge numbers of volunteers coordinating only through the Internet. Quality was maintained not by rigid standards or autocracy but by the naively simple strategy of releasing every week and getting feedback from hundreds of users within days, creating a sort of rapid Darwinian selection on the mutations introduced by developers." Bryan Cantrill , an engineer of
11476-410: The branding more consistent with OpenLinux and Open Server, it confused people as well as build and installation scripts that tested for system name. Later, the newly renamed SCO Group reverted to the previous UnixWare brand and version release numbering, releasing UnixWare 7.1.3 . In terms of the question of making some of UnixWare open source, in August 2001 Caldera International did announce that it
11627-590: The case of IBM PC compatibles , the OS is usually Microsoft Windows ; in the case of Apple 's Mac computers, it has always been macOS ; Sun Microsystems sold SPARC hardware with the Solaris installed; video game consoles such as the Xbox , PlayStation , Wii , and the Nintendo Switch each have their own proprietary OS. This limits Linux's market share: consumers are unaware that an alternative exists, they must make
11778-565: The company continued; for fiscal 2000, ending on October 31, Caldera Systems lost $ 39.2 million on revenue of $ 4.3 million. The merger was originally being done under the name of the holding company Caldera, Inc., Then on March 26, 2001, during the CeBIT conference in Germany, Caldera Systems announced that it would be changing its name to Caldera International once the SCO acquisition was complete. By this point,
11929-528: The company's new marketing slogan. In light of that, the company began the Caldera Developer Network, which was intended to give developers of all kinds "early access to UNIX and Linux technologies, allowing them to develop on UNIX, on Linux or on a combined UNIX and Linux platform." Caldera International's initial release of UnixWare was renamed Open UNIX 8 . This release was what would have been UnixWare 7.1.2 . While it may have been done to make
12080-447: The complexity and diversity of different devices, and due to the large number of formats and standards handled by those APIs, this infrastructure needs to evolve to better fit other devices. Also, a good userspace device library is the key to the success of having userspace applications to be able to work with all formats supported by those devices. The primary difference between Linux and many other popular contemporary operating systems
12231-498: The consumer market is perhaps the mobile device market, with Android being the dominant operating system on smartphones and very popular on tablets and, more recently, on wearables . Linux gaming is also on the rise with Valve showing its support for Linux and rolling out SteamOS , its own gaming-oriented Linux distribution, which was later implemented in their Steam Deck platform. Linux distributions have also gained popularity with various local and national governments, such as
12382-498: The corporate name The SCO Group and took that entity in a completely different business direction. Caldera, Inc. , based in Utah , was founded in 1994 by Bryan Wayne Sparks and Ransom H. Love, receiving start-up funding from Ray Noorda 's Canopy Group . Its main product was Caldera Network Desktop (CND), a Linux distribution mainly targeted at business customers and containing some proprietary additions. Caldera, Inc. later purchased
12533-459: The creation of two Utah-based wholly owned subsidiaries, Caldera Systems, Inc. and Caldera Thin Clients, Inc. , in order to split up tasks and directions. Caldera Systems, whose actual incorporation date had been August 21, 1998, took over the Linux business, including development, training, services, and support, while Caldera Thin Clients (which changed its name to Lineo the following year) took over
12684-442: The deal was renegotiated to include OpenServer in what was sold to Caldera Systems, although a percentage of OpenServer revenue would still go back to SCO. The monetary terms of the deal were adjusted as well, with Caldera Systems paying SCO more cash than in the original agreement. Analysts were skeptical that these multiple operating systems could be managed without considerable difficulties being encountered. Financial pressure on
12835-464: The design of Unix served as a scaffolding, "Linux grew with a lot of mutations – and because the mutations were less than random, they were faster and more directed than alpha-particles in DNA ." Eric S. Raymond considers Linux's revolutionary aspects to be social, not technical: before Linux, complex software was designed carefully by small groups, but "Linux evolved in a completely different way. From nearly
12986-502: The development of 386BSD , from which NetBSD , OpenBSD and FreeBSD descended, predated that of Linux. Linus Torvalds has stated on separate occasions that if the GNU kernel or 386BSD had been available at the time (1991), he probably would not have created Linux. While attending the University of Helsinki in the fall of 1990, Torvalds enrolled in a Unix course. The course used a MicroVAX minicomputer running Ultrix , and one of
13137-527: The development of the Linux kernel on Minix and applications written for Minix were also used on Linux. Later, Linux matured and further Linux kernel development took place on Linux systems. GNU applications also replaced all Minix components, because it was advantageous to use the freely available code from the GNU Project with the fledgling operating system; code licensed under the GNU GPL can be reused in other computer programs as long as they also are released under
13288-476: The development of the components of the system and free software. An analysis of the Linux kernel in 2017 showed that well over 85% of the code was developed by programmers who are being paid for their work, leaving about 8.2% to unpaid developers and 4.1% unclassified. Some of the major corporations that provide contributions include Intel , Samsung , Google , AMD , Oracle , and Facebook . Several corporations, notably Red Hat, Canonical , and SUSE have built
13439-541: The evolution of Java language and software platform through the Java Community Process . Caldera Systems' role on the Executive Committee included representing the Linux and open source communities. The company was re-elected to its seat on the Executive Committee after it became Caldera International, and represented Java usage on SCO Unix platforms as well. Work to improve just-in-time compilation under
13590-546: The federal government of Brazil . Linus Torvalds is the lead maintainer for the Linux kernel and guides its development, while Greg Kroah-Hartman is the lead maintainer for the stable branch. Zoë Kooyman is the executive director of the Free Software Foundation, which in turn supports the GNU components. Finally, individuals and corporations develop third-party non-GNU components. These third-party components comprise
13741-499: The first Linux distribution to include Webmin as the standard tool for system administration. Caldera Systems was a leader in the adoption of the Java language and software platform on Linux. The Blackdown Java project, which first produced working Java ports for Linux systems, was featured on Caldera OpenLinux. In 2000, Caldera Systems was one of the companies elected to the inaugural JCP Executive Committee for Java SE/EE, which guided
13892-466: The first version of the Linux kernel on the Internet . Like GNU and 386BSD, Linux did not have any Unix code and therefore avoided any current legal issues . Desktop Linux distributions include a windowing system such as X11 or Wayland and a desktop environment such as GNOME , KDE Plasma or Xfce . Distributions intended for servers may not have a graphical user interface at all or include
14043-473: The fortunes of Caldera International had been steadily declining, the SCO–Caldera combined total revenue having decreased from $ 170 million in 1999 to $ 70 million in 2001. The company was consistently reporting losses; for the third quarter of its fiscal year in 2001, for instance, it reported a net loss of $ 18.8 million against revenue of only $ 18.9 million. In the following quarter they took
14194-453: The goal to "fund operations and accelerate the growth and acceptance of Linux." Also, Caldera Systems announced that it would be filing to have an initial public offering . Ransom Love said that the Microsoft settlement would not benefit Caldera Systems other than that Caldera, Inc. would relinquish the name "Caldera", which would address existing industry confusion between the two. Reports at
14345-525: The interests of the existing business conflicted with their growth model. SCO Unix was mature and sold itself (mainly to repeat customers and replicated sites). The VAR relationship was even more problematic. Even though the reseller organizations had been combined, in reality the prior SCO resellers made much more from each SCO Unix sale than from sales of Caldera OpenLinux, so they were not anxious to move existing customers from Unix to Linux. And even those that were supportive of Linux, did not necessarily see
14496-459: The latest stable versions available. They have pseudo-releases and installation media that are simply snapshots of the distribution at the time of the installation image's release. Typically, a rolling-release OS installed from older installation medium can be fully updated after it is installed. Depending on the usage case, there can be pros and cons to both standard release and rolling release software development methodologies . In terms of
14647-513: The length and difficulty of the acquisition process had alienated some longtime SCO customers and partners. The acquisition closed on May 7, 2001, and the new Caldera International name became effective. The merged company had major offices in not just Utah, but also Santa Cruz, California , Murray Hill, New Jersey , and Watford, England , as well as smaller facilities in 16 additional countries. Thus included in late May 2001, Caldera International, with investments of Fujitsu and Hitachi , opening
14798-516: The mid-1990s in the supercomputing community, where organizations such as NASA started to replace their increasingly expensive machines with clusters of inexpensive commodity computers running Linux. Commercial use began when Dell and IBM , followed by Hewlett-Packard , started offering Linux support to escape Microsoft 's monopoly in the desktop operating system market. Today, Linux systems are used throughout computing, from embedded systems to virtually all supercomputers , and have secured
14949-435: The need to change the contents of the system's hard disk drive. The website DistroWatch lists many Linux distributions and displays some of the ones that have the most web traffic on the site. The Wikimedia Foundation released an analysis of the browser User Agents of visitors to WMF websites until 2015, which includes details of the most popular Operating System identifiers, including some Linux distributions. Many of
15100-441: The notable exception. The GNU C library , an implementation of the C standard library , works as a wrapper for the system calls of the Linux kernel necessary to the kernel-userspace interface, the toolchain is a broad collection of programming tools vital to Linux development (including the compilers used to build the Linux kernel itself), and the coreutils implement many basic Unix tools . The GNU Project also develops Bash ,
15251-797: The operating system is booted from a read-only medium such as a CD or DVD, any user data that needs to be retained between sessions cannot be stored on the boot device but must be written to another storage device, such as a USB flash drive or a hard disk drive. Many Linux distributions provide a "live" form in addition to their conventional form, which is a network-based or removable-media image intended to be used only for installation; such distributions include SUSE , Ubuntu, Linux Mint , MEPIS and Fedora Linux . Some distributions, including Knoppix , Puppy Linux , Devil-Linux, SuperGamer , SliTaz GNU/Linux and dyne:bolic , are designed primarily for live use. Additionally, some minimal distributions can be run directly from as little space as one floppy disk without
15402-501: The operating system to their specific needs. Distributions are maintained by individuals, loose-knit teams, volunteer organizations, and commercial entities. A distribution is responsible for the default configuration of the installed Linux kernel, general system security, and more generally integration of the different software packages into a coherent whole. Distributions typically use a package manager such as apt , yum , zypper , pacman or portage to install, remove, and update all of
15553-450: The other hand, software features and technology planning are easier in standard releases due to a better understanding of upcoming features in the next version(s). Software release cycles can also be synchronized with those of major upstream software projects, such as desktop environments . As for the user experience , standard releases are often viewed as more stable and bug-free since software conflicts can be more easily addressed and
15704-446: The other with a set of GNU utilities and tools for setting up a file system. Since the installation procedure was complicated, especially in the face of growing amounts of available software, distributions sprang up to simplify it. Early distributions included: The two oldest, still active distribution projects started in 1993. The SLS distribution was not well maintained, so in July 1993
15855-401: The others were not open). The early leader in the Linux as a business race was Red Hat Software , which attracted equity investments from several major technology companies in early 1999. Red Hat also tended to get the most media attention. Besides Red Hat and Caldera, other well-known companies selling Linux distributions included SuSE , Turbolinux , and Mandrake Soft . But no company at
16006-457: The performance of high-end applications. The latter factor was because SCO UnixWare had an advantage over Linux at the time in terms of support for 16- and 32-way symmetric multiprocessing , UnixWare NonStop Clusters , and some other high-end operating system capabilities. Indeed, one SCO product manager said that some Linux applications could run several times faster under UnixWare with LKP than they could under native Linux. The SCO acquisition
16157-467: The popular distributions are listed below. Several operating systems include the Linux kernel, but have a userland that differs significantly from that of mainstream Linux distributions: Whether such operating systems count as a "Linux distribution" is a controversial topic. They use the Linux kernel, so the Linux Foundation and Chris DiBona , Google's former open-source chief, agree that Android
16308-423: The president of iXorg, a reseller organization focused on SCO, stated, "The real value that Caldera will get from the deal is not the Unix name, not the [SCO] customer base, not even the technologies. It is the reseller channel." Skeptics noted, however, that many of those listed resellers were probably not that active anymore, especially in light of SCO's recent struggles (it had reported a $ 19 million quarterly loss
16459-455: The required texts was Operating Systems: Design and Implementation by Andrew S. Tanenbaum . This textbook included a copy of Tanenbaum's Minix operating system. It was with this course that Torvalds first became exposed to Unix. In 1991, he became curious about operating systems. Frustrated by the licensing of Minix, which at the time limited it to educational use only, he began to work on his operating system kernel, which eventually became
16610-448: The rolling release model can have advantages in timely security updates, fixing system or application security bugs and vulnerabilities , that standard releases may have to wait till the next release for or patch in various versions. In a rolling release distribution, where the user has chosen to run it as a highly dynamic system, the constant flux of software packages can introduce new unintended vulnerabilities. A "live" distribution
16761-426: The same VAR channel business that SCO was in, using the argument that resellers could find larger margins with free software than by selling Microsoft's Windows NT . But it had been a difficult sell against SCO; even when Linux outperformed SCO Unix, the idea of switching vendors and support organizations made resellers reluctant to make the move. So combining these channels was seen as a solution to this problem. As
16912-489: The same goal. Caldera International was part of the United Linux effort of Linux companies seeking to form a common distribution that could compete with Red Hat. In the end none of these efforts succeeded in the marketplace, and Caldera Systems/International lost large amounts of money in all four years of its existence. Under severe financial pressure, in June 2002 Love was replaced as CEO by Darl McBride , who soon adopted
17063-412: The same or a compatible license. Torvalds initiated a switch from his original license, which prohibited commercial redistribution, to the GNU GPL. Developers worked to integrate GNU components with the Linux kernel, creating a fully functional and free operating system. Linus Torvalds had wanted to call his invention " Freax ", a portmanteau of "free", "freak", and "x" (as an allusion to Unix). During
17214-441: The software licenses explicitly permit redistribution, however, provides a basis for larger-scale projects that collect the software produced by stand-alone projects and make it available all at once in the form of a Linux distribution. Many Linux distributions manage a remote collection of system software and application software packages available for download and installation through a network connection. This allows users to adapt
17365-507: The software stack more thoroughly tested and evaluated, during the software development cycle. For this reason, they tend to be the preferred choice in enterprise environments and mission-critical tasks. However, rolling releases offer more current software which can also provide increased stability and fewer software bugs along with the additional benefits of new features, greater functionality, faster running speeds, and improved system and application security . Regarding software security ,
17516-569: The start of his work on the system, some of the project's makefiles included the name "Freax" for about half a year. Initially, Torvalds considered the name "Linux" but dismissed it as too egotistical. To facilitate development, the files were uploaded to the FTP server ( ftp.funet.fi ) of FUNET in September 1991. Ari Lemmke, Torvalds' coworker at the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) who
17667-408: The symbol CALD. On the first day of trading, March 21, 2000, Caldera Systems' shares doubled in value, going from an initial price of $ 14 to close at $ 29 7/16, with heavy trading been seen and an intra-day high of $ 33. The IPO raised $ 70 million for the company and gave it a market capitalization of $ 1.1 billion. While the launch was successful on its own terms, analysts saw signs that the Linux mania
17818-572: The time also indicated that the settlement would not directly benefit Caldera Systems, but that Caldera Systems could get an intangible benefit from a name association with a company that had bested an industry giant. Love also said that the timing between the funding round, work for which had begun six months earlier, and the IPO announcement was "unfortunate, and completely coincidental". Caldera Systems reincorporated in Delaware on March 6, 2000. By this point it
17969-624: The time had been successful in building a profitable business around open source software. Caldera Systems focused on a high-end Linux product and its Linux distribution became rich with features with bundled proprietary software . For instance, the company offered NetWare for Linux , which included a full-blown NetWare implementation from Novell. They licensed Sun Microsystems 's Wabi to allow people to run Windows applications under Linux. Additionally, they shipped with Linux versions of WordPerfect from Corel as well as productivity applications from Applixware . Since many of their customers used
18120-461: The time it was worth around $ 110–114 million. SCO was much the bigger company, with 900 employees to Caldera Systems' 120. But SCO had been in distress; in part due to the advent of Linux, a series of previously good financial results had gone sour for the company as 1999 turned into 2000. As Forbes magazine stated, "Questions remain about execution, but the deal is at least a temporary life preserver for SCO, whose flagship UnixWare server software
18271-478: The time, "UnitedLinux is widely viewed as an effort by second-tier Linux companies to gain the critical mass held by Linux leader Red Hat, but industry watchers are skeptical it will triumph." Other users saw the venture as more of a marketing move by a group of companies that were in difficulty. Intimations that UnitedLinux would also feature per-seat licensing were unpopular in the broader Linux community, and SuSE for their part said they had no such plans. Overall,
18422-435: The tree of any Linux filesystem. Those standards, however, see limited use, even among the distributions developed by members of the organization. The diversity of Linux distributions means that not all software runs on all distributions, depending on what libraries and other system attributes are required. Packaged software and software repositories are usually specific to a particular distribution, though cross-installation
18573-471: The use case of the system. This custom interface is accessed through a client that resides on another system, not necessarily Linux-based. Several types of window managers exist for X11, including tiling , dynamic , stacking , and compositing . Window managers provide means to control the placement and appearance of individual application windows, and interact with the X Window System. Simpler X window managers such as dwm , ratpoison , or i3wm provide
18724-462: The user install Linux on top of their current system, such as WinLinux or coLinux . Linux is installed to the Windows hard disk partition, and can be started from inside Windows itself. Virtual machines (such as VirtualBox or VMware ) also make it possible for Linux to be run inside another OS. The VM software simulates a separate computer onto which the Linux system is installed. After installation,
18875-559: The various distribution-specific support and community forums, such as ones for Ubuntu , Fedora, Arch Linux , Gentoo , etc. Linux distributions host mailing lists ; commonly there will be a specific topic such as usage or development for a given list. There are several technology websites with a Linux focus. Print magazines on Linux often bundle cover disks that carry software or even complete Linux distributions. Although Linux distributions are generally available without charge, several large corporations sell, support, and contribute to
19026-640: The virtual machine can be booted as if it were an independent computer. Various tools are also available to perform full dual-boot installations from existing platforms without a CD, most notably: Some specific proprietary software products are not available in any form for Linux. As of September 2015, the Steam gaming service has over 1,500 games available on Linux, compared to 2,323 games for Mac and 6,500 Windows games. Emulation and API-translation projects like Wine and CrossOver make it possible to run non-Linux-based software on Linux systems, either by emulating
19177-511: The word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses and recommends the name " GNU/Linux " to emphasize the use and importance of GNU software in many distributions, causing some controversy . Thousands of distributions exist, many based directly or indirectly on other distributions; popular Linux distributions include Debian , Fedora Linux , Arch Linux , and Ubuntu , while commercial distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise . Other than
19328-429: The word "Linux" should be pronounced, he included an audio guide with the kernel source code. However, in this recording, he pronounces Linux as /ˈlinʊks/ ( LEEN -uuks ) with a short but close front unrounded vowel , instead of a near-close near-front unrounded vowel as in his newsgroup post. The adoption of Linux in production environments, rather than being used only by hobbyists, started to take off first in
19479-510: The world's largest vendor of Unix licenses. SCO also had thousands of business applications running on it targeted to vertical markets . In addition, Caldera Systems saw SCO's role as one of the OS companies involved in Project Monterey as a means to develop a 64-bit computing strategy. But a primary reason for the acquisition was to get SCO's 15 000 -strong reseller channel. Caldera Systems had been emphasizing trying to get into much
19630-724: The world. Beside "glue" components, such as the distribution installers (for example, Debian-Installer and Anaconda ) and the package management systems, very few packages are actually written by a distribution's maintainers. Distributions have been designed for a wide range of computing environments, including desktops , servers , laptops , netbooks , mobile devices (phones and tablets), and embedded systems . There are commercially backed distributions, such as Fedora Linux ( Red Hat ), openSUSE ( SUSE ) and Ubuntu ( Canonical Ltd. ), and entirely community-driven distributions, such as Debian , Slackware , Gentoo and Arch Linux . Most distributions come ready-to-use and prebuilt for
19781-405: Was also active in the Java language and software platform on Linux community. In March 2000, Caldera Systems staged a successful IPO of its stock, although the stock price did not reach the stratospheric heights of its chief competitor Red Hat and some other companies during the "Linux mania" of 1999. In August 2000, Caldera Systems announced the purchase of Unix technology and services from
19932-481: Was an attempt by a consortium of Linux companies to create a common base distribution for enterprise use and minimize duplication of engineering effort. and form an effective competitor to Red Hat. The founding members of United Linux were SuSE , Turbolinux , Conectiva , and Caldera International. The consortium was announced on May 30, 2002. The UnitedLinux distribution would be based mostly SuSE Enterprise Linux rather than Caldera OpenLinux. The Caldera product name
20083-627: Was an attempt to compete with the Red Hat Network service and gain a source of recurring revenue. Then in May 2001, Caldera International bought the WhatifLinux technology and assets outright from Acrylis, and changed the name of the service to Volution Online. Caldera Systems had earlier begun work on a Linux equivalent to the Microsoft Exchange Server that was aimed at the small to medium business market. This would eventually become
20234-415: Was changed to "Caldera OpenLinux powered by United Linux", which as one Network World writer observed, was "certainly never going to become a catchphrase." UnitedLinux did attract some major hardware vendors in support, such as Hewlett-Packard , Intel , and AMD , with the goal of creating a uniform Linux distribution by the end of 2002. However, as CNET technology reporter Stephen Shankland wrote at
20385-501: Was conceived and implemented in 1969, at AT&T 's Bell Labs , in the United States by Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie , Douglas McIlroy , and Joe Ossanna . First released in 1971, Unix was written entirely in assembly language , as was common practice at the time. In 1973, in a key pioneering approach, it was rewritten in the C programming language by Dennis Ritchie (except for some hardware and I/O routines). The availability of
20536-446: Was created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum , a computer science professor, and released in 1987 as a minimal Unix-like operating system targeted at students and others who wanted to learn operating system principles. Although the complete source code of Minix was freely available, the licensing terms prevented it from being free software until the licensing changed in April 2000. Although not released until 1992, due to legal complications ,
20687-425: Was deployed during 1999. The tool was a unified, easy to use administration tool with a modular design and goals of scalability and broad scope applicability, and was expressly designed to be usable on other Linux distributions in addition to Caldera Systems'. Following that, Caldera Systems sponsored the development of browser-based Unix system administration via the webmin project between 1999 and 2001. It became
20838-510: Was designed by Linus Torvalds , following the lack of a working kernel for GNU , a Unix -compatible operating system made entirely of free software that had been undergoing development since 1983 by Richard Stallman . While a separate working Unix-compatible system called Minix was later released, its license was not entirely free at the time. The first entirely free Unix for personal computers, 386BSD , did not appear until 1992, by which time Torvalds had already built and publicly released
20989-691: Was finally cooling, abetted by Red Hat and VA Linux having seen their values steadily decrease since their spectacular starts. So, while some observers viewed the IPO as a success, others viewed it as a disappointment. Red Hat continued to dominate in North America, with an over 50 percent share of the Linux market. On August 2, 2000, following several months of negotiations, Santa Cruz Operation announced that it would sell its Server Software and Services Divisions, including UnixWare – its most technically advanced proprietary Unix operating systems for Intel commodity hardware – to Caldera Systems. (The agreement
21140-465: Was in danger of eventually becoming irrelevant in the face of Linux." As Caldera Systems saw it, Unix and Linux were complementary rather than competitive technologies, especially in the sense that SCO Unix represented a good back-office and database solution while Linux specialized in networking. The deal gave Caldera Systems access to partnerships with Compaq Computer and IBM , both of which resold UnixWare, and also meant Caldera Systems would become
21291-459: Was later originally developed, it represented the first successful commercial attempt at distributing a primarily single-user microcomputer that ran a Unix operating system. With Unix increasingly "locked in" as a proprietary product, the GNU Project , started in 1983 by Richard Stallman , had the goal of creating a "complete Unix-compatible software system" composed entirely of free software . Work began in 1984. Later, in 1985, Stallman started
21442-452: Was limited in some ways and the product was costly. Caldera Systems made a deal in February 2001 with Acrylis, Inc., a company based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts , to offer Acrylis's subscription-based service that allowed system administrators to test and then update Linux systems over a network. The service also delivered alerts to customers regarding the necessity for upgrades. The effort
21593-510: Was one of the volunteer administrators for the FTP server at the time, did not think that "Freax" was a good name, so he named the project "Linux" on the server without consulting Torvalds. Later, however, Torvalds consented to "Linux". According to a newsgroup post by Torvalds, the word "Linux" should be pronounced ( / ˈ l ɪ n ʊ k s / LIN -uuks ) with a short 'i' as in 'print' and 'u' as in 'put'. To further demonstrate how
21744-507: Was originally scheduled to close in October 2000, but got delayed due to concerns from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding the details of the merger. However, the two companies' support organizations did get combined during this time. In addition, there was confusion among the SCO customer base about the fate of its other operating system, SCO OpenServer . So in February 2001,
21895-407: Was phrased in terms of Caldera Holding, Inc., a typical Newco in such transactions.) The annual SCO Forum conference of developers and resellers at the University of California, Santa Cruz , held later that month, had its name shortened to just "Forum". The deal was complex, involving cash, stock, and loans, and difficult to evaluate monetarily, but based on the price of Caldera Systems stock at
22046-493: Was placing the code for the regular expression parser and the grep and awk commands, as well for the AIM Multiuser Benchmark , under the GNU General Public License . It also said it would begin an "Open Access to Open UNIX 8" program to allow developer partners to read-only viewing of unencumbered parts of the source base. But overall, Caldera International found itself in a classic business problem where
22197-518: Was released from its obligation not to enter the computer business; freed of that obligation, Bell Labs began selling Unix as a proprietary product, where users were not legally allowed to modify it. Onyx Systems began selling early microcomputer-based Unix workstations in 1980. Later, Sun Microsystems , founded as a spin-off of a student project at Stanford University , also began selling Unix-based desktop workstations in 1982. While Sun workstations did not use commodity PC hardware, for which Linux
22348-482: Was seen as significantly improved from the previous year's 1.3 release, especially in terms of it having a fully graphical and easy-to-use installation feature. Ease of installation was an important criteria in selecting a Linux distribution, and Caldera Deutschland had created this first fully graphical installer for Linux, called Lizard, starting in November 1998. Several years later it was still receiving praise from reviewers. The installer could even be started from
22499-416: Was that there were a lot of business entities that didn't want this to happen. Intel was the biggest opposition." Instead, there was a focus on SCO's Linux Kernel Personality (LKP), a layer that conformed to the Linux Standard Base specification which would allow applications built for Linux to run on SCO's UnixWare. This was seen as both a way to capture more applications for Unix, and as a way to increase
22650-551: Was the Volution Authentication Server, which allowed the management of Unix and Linux authentication via Active Directory. When Caldera OpenLinux 3.1 Workstation was released in June 2001, it was with the requirement for per-seat licensing . This was part of what continued to bring criticism of Caldera in the some quarters of the open source and free software communities; Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman subsequently said of Ransom Love, "He's only
22801-518: Was well positioned in some respects, such as having a strong relationship with Sun and receiving good product reviews within the industry. But it suffered from a lack of public awareness; as IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky said, "They have a wonderful demo, and the product looks very good. But if you asked people on the street about Caldera they would probably think you are talking about a volcano in Hawaii." The company then staged an IPO of its common stock, with
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