Towards a Commercial Direction
July 30, 2008
When Caldera Open Linux took on the form it would be most remembered for, it had switched over to the high-end Linux product. It was seen more as a business distribution rather than a hobbyist distribution. It was easy to install and configure as compared to other Linuxes at the time. The Caldera became more feature rich but bundled with proprietary software and became less community-oriented.
The Caldera Open Linux was the first distribution to create certification since the people behind it were firmly convinced that vendor neutral certification was the key, thus the founding of the Linux Professional Institute. They also provided funding for the Linux Standard Base. The realization that vendors needed a binary compatible set of standards for porting came early for Caldera.
July 29, 2008
An alliance of large business-oriented Linux distributions which utilized the KDE desktop consisted of the SUSE, Linux Turbolinux, Connectiva and Caldera. SUSE Linux was one of the largest distributions in Europe while being the most business-oriented. Turbolinux is the largest distribution in Asia while Connectiva is the premier business-oriented Linux distribution in South America. The formation of such an alliance was for the purpose of establishing Caldera as the premier Linux brand. All members of the alliance agreed that each member would have an irrevocable, perpetual and worldwide license to use and unlimitedly exploit any intellectual property rights of the other members.
Business responded favorably to the move and for the first time, there was a Linux distribution that had global scope and support at the VAR, a full training organization, enterprise applications and an actual production GUI that ran well on a variety of hardware.
Linux can be obtained in two ways. The operating system can be assembled for almost nothing as all the necessary components can be downloaded free of charge from the Internet, which is one way of doing it. The other way is through a distribution which is offered by various companies that also includes a wide range of applications and installation programs that make the installation of Linux a lot simpler.
Linux and its variants are considerably less expensive to run. Aside from its many free versions, those that are not are generally very affordable. Issues are usually resolved more quickly than Windows NT or even UNIX. It is seen by many user groups such as training companies, universities, research centers and private users as a real alternative to other operating systems.
The Business Oriented Distribution
July 27, 2008
Caldera Systems, now known as the SCO Group, created the defunct Caldera Open Linux which was the early business-oriented distribution. The then CEO’s vision for Caldera was to create a commercial grade implementation of Linux with built-in IPX and Windows for workgroup and Internet protocol support while supporting DOS, Windows and UNIX applications.
The Caldera Network Desktop was able to put together certain technologies. It ran on x86, PowerPC and DEC Alpha processors because it was built on the Linux kernel. Being Unix-like, its wide area networking was far more advanced than the Microsoft Networked OSes at the time. It worked perfectly inside of the most common local area network due to its IPX support. It can also run on UNIX, Windows, Macintosh and Caldera itself because of the Willows API code written for it.
