Caldera OpenLinux

By 1994, under CEO Ray Noorda's purview, Novell Corsair was a project run by Novell's advanced technology group that sought to put together a desktop metaphor with Internet connectivity and toward that end conducted research on how to better and more easily integrate and manage network access for users. At the time, the Internet was dominated by Unix-based operating systems, but the Novell group saw the Unixes of the day as being too hardware intensive, too large, and charging too much in license fees. They became convinced that Linux offered the best possible answer for the operating system component, and started building code towards that purpose, including contributing work on IPX networking for NetWare and Wine compatibility layer for Windows. However, Noorda departed from Novell and under new management, the Linux role in Corsair was dropped. Caldera, Inc. was founded in 1994 by Bryan Wayne Sparks and Ransom H. Love and received start-up funding from Noorda's Utah-focused Canopy Group, and Caldera became one of the first commercial companies putting out a Linux distribution. That first distribution was Caldera Network Desktop, which was based on Red Hat Commercial Linux. One of the features of Caldera Network Desktop was an installation component called LISA (Linux Installation and System Administration), In terms of Linux distributions, that group was responsible for LST Power Linux, a Slackware-derived distribution that had been maintained by LST since its first incarnation in 1993. Caldera Network Desktop ended sales in March 1997. == Technology and product ==

Caldera, Inc. era Caldera, Inc. collaborated with the LST staff, which by then had become LST Software GmbH, and its LST Power Linux distribution, which was made the basis of their following product. (The name OpenLinux tended to annoy people associated with other Linux distributions, falsely suggesting as it did that the other distributions were not open.) Review copies of it became available by March 1997. By one account, it was the first commercial distribution to include version 2 of the Linux kernel. Caldera offered three versions of OpenLinux, with one for hackers and the other two for resellers and commercial users. OpenLinux typically came with a separate CD-ROM called the Solutions CD, which is what delivered the commercial software. These included such powerful enterprise products as the Adabas D database management system from Software AG. The Caldera Systems distribution used the KDE desktop. Other open-source components that it came with included Qt and Wine. 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. OpenLinux 2.2, released in April 1999, 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 a Microsoft Windows partition. Caldera International era During 2000, Caldera Systems began the process of acquiring the Unix businesses of the Santa Cruz Operation. In March 2001 announced that it would be changing its name to Caldera International. Caldera OpenLinux 3.1 came out in June 2001. == Markets, alliances, and sales ==

Caldera OpenLinux offered specific packages for e-commerce and secure-server configurations. In its era, Caldera OpenLinux was one of the four major commercial Linux distributions, the others being Red Hat Linux, Turbolinux, and SuSE Linux. The only Linux distribution company that was doing even somewhat well at the time was Red Hat. Caldera International was further disadvantaged in that the Unix side of its business contributed most of its revenue and represented the products its resellers had the largest incentive to sell. == End ==

United Linux was an attempt by a consortium of Linux companies to create a common base distribution for enterprise use and minimize duplication of engineering effort However, the UnitedLinux distribution would be based mostly SuSE Enterprise Linux rather than Caldera OpenLinux. As such, the Caldera product name was changed to "Caldera OpenLinux powered by United Linux". This effectively meant the end of the LST-/Caldera-based OpenLinux technology itself, In the event, United Linux did not last much longer. In June 2002, Caldera International had a change in management, with Darl McBride taking over as CEO from Ransom Love. Caldera International soon changed its name to The SCO Group. The product name Caldera OpenLinux became "SCO Linux powered by UnitedLinux". In May 2003, the SCO Group began issuing proclamations and lawsuits based upon its belief that its Unix intellectual property had been incorporated into Linux in an unlawful and uncompensated manner – thus commencing the SCO–Linux disputes – and stopped selling its own Linux product. The United Linux effort itself collapsed as a consequence. In any case, Caldera OpenLinux had played a significant role in Linux history by establishing what would be necessary to create a mainstream, business-oriented system, with stability and support, out of the Linux kernel. ==Known releases==

• Caldera OpenLinux Lite/Base/Standard(/Deluxe) 1.0 (1997) with Linux kernel 2.0.25 • Caldera OpenLinux Lite/Base/Standard 1.2 (1998-04-17) • Caldera Systems OpenLinux Lite/Base 1.3 (1998-09-28) with Linux kernel 2.0.35 • Caldera Systems OpenLinux 1.4? (there are some mentionings in the net, but in such a low number, that it is unclear, if this version was actually released ... and not sure if 2.0 and 2.1 existed at all) • Caldera Systems OpenLinux 2.2 (1999-04-19) with Linux kernel 2.2.xx • Caldera Systems OpenLinux eDesktop/eServer 2.3 (September 1999) with Linux kernel 2.2.10 with Linux kernel 2.4.2 • Caldera International OpenLinux Workstation/Server 3.1.1 (January 2002) with Linux kernel 2.4.13 == Notes ==