Lineo was a thin client and embedded systems company spun out of Caldera Thin Clients by 20 July 1999.

History

Caldera Thin Clients, Inc., had been created as a subsidiary of

Caldera, Inc. Caldera was a US-based software company founded in 1994 to develop Linux- and DOS-based operating system products. Caldera Caldera, Inc. was a Canopy-funded software company founded in October 1994 and incorporated on 25 January 1995 ...

, on 2 September 1998. Caldera Thin Clients' original President and CEO was Roger Alan Gross, who resigned in January 1999. In April 1999, Caldera Thin Clients released the no longer needed sources to

GEM A gemstone (also called a fine gem, jewel, precious stone, or semiprecious stone) is a piece of mineral crystal which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments. However, certain rocks (such as lapis lazuli, opal, a ...

and ViewMAX under the GNU General Public License (GPL). In July 1999,

Caldera Thin Clients Lineo was a thin client and embedded systems company spun out of Caldera Thin Clients by 20 July 1999. History Caldera Thin Clients, Inc., had been created as a subsidiary of Caldera, Inc., on 2 September 1998. Caldera Thin Clients' original ...

decided on a major refocus on Linux and consequently changed its name to Lineo. Lineo licensed a stripped down OpenLinux distribution from Caldera Systems and named it Embedix. They continued to maintain the former Caldera Thin Clients sales office in Taipei in 1999. In January 2000, Lineo reincorporated in Delaware. Lineo's technologies fully owned were well ahead of competitors' products in the embedded system portion. These technologies included: * Rt-Control provided μClinux - a version of Linux for microcontrollers, such as the Motorola

68k The Motorola 68000 series (also known as 680x0, m68000, m68k, or 68k) is a family of 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and w ...

/ ColdFire line, i960, ARM7, and ETRAX CRIS chips. With these chips lacking MMU and thus unable to provide multi-tasking capabilities, uClinux was 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 ran in as little as 2 MB of disk/flash storage and 8 MB RAM. * Embedix - Lineo's

flagship A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of naval ships, characteristically a flag officer entitled by custom to fly a distinguishing flag. Used more loosely, it is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, typically the fi ...

product that ran a complete multitasking, networked Linux operating system in 2 MB of ROM/ flash and 4 MB of RAM. * Embedix SDK and the Embrowser - a fully graphical internet browser for embedded systems. Embrowser was Lineo's port of the 32-bit Extended DOS-based browser DR-WebSpyder, originally based on the Arachne browser. This combination of technologies allowed Caldera Thin Clients to offer a full Linux operating system with a graphical browser that could run off a

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

. More importantly the product was unique, and this came from the fact that Lineo's view on the Linux embedded market was different 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 Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become ass ...

with its EL/IX created a kernel independent framework (API) which allowed some Linux software to run on the eCos kernel. Lineo did not agree with this assessment and believed the API offered far more advantages and allowed for a fully hardened system, that is, Lineo utilized a custom Linux kernel. Through the six companies 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

microcontroller A microcontroller (MCU for ''microcontroller unit'', often also MC, UC, or μC) is a small computer on a single VLSI integrated circuit (IC) chip. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs (processor cores) along with memory and programmable i ...

s, through traditional platforms like x86, and up to high end, high availability systems. Lineo's president and CEO, when it reformed under the new name, became Bryan Wayne Sparks, who also had been one of the original founders of Caldera, Inc., in 1994. At the time of its creation, Lineo had 14 employees. Lineo's main product was Embedix, a lightweight Linux distribution for embedded systems, licensed from Caldera Systems, Inc., another subsidiary of Caldera, Inc. Another product was

DR-DOS DR-DOS (written as DR DOS, without a hyphen, in versions up to and including 6.0) is a disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles. Upon its introduction in 1988, it was the first DOS attempting to be compatible with IBM PC DOS and MS-D ...

, a DOS–compatible operating system, previously developed by

Caldera UK Ltd. DR-DOS (written as DR DOS, without a hyphen, in versions up to and including 6.0) is a disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles. Upon its introduction in 1988, it was the first DOS attempting to be compatible with IBM PC DOS and MS-D ...

between 1996 and 1999 and originally acquired from

Novell Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the lead ...

by Caldera, Inc., on 23 July 1996. Through its acquisitions Lineo also had a range of products in many different product categories. Through a series of acquisitions and mergers, Lineo eventually ballooned to a peak of about 350 employees, with offices in seven countries. The companies that it acquired or merged with were: * Zentropix – realtime Linux specialists * Rt-Control Inc. – uClinux creators, very small board (uCdimm) vendors * Moreton Bay – VPN/Router vendor (located in Brisbane, Australia) * United Systems Engineering (USE) – Japanese Linux consulting company * Fireplug – Canadian Linux consulting company (ThinLinux product) * Inup – High availability Linux * Embedded Power Corporation – Realtime and DSP OS (RTXC product)

Decline

In October 2001, Lineo refreshed and expanded a free license for the redistribution and modification of original Digital Research binaries and sources related to

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...

and MP/M through "The Unofficial CP/M Web site" a license originally issued by Caldera in 1997. After some assets were auctioned off in April 2002, by July 2002 the company had reformed as Embedix, Inc. under the lead of Matthew R. Harris, formerly a Summit Law attorney for Caldera, Inc. However, Embedix, Inc. was short-lived and ceased to exist later that year, when the Embedix division was purchased and absorbed by Motorola's Metrowerks. The remaining Digital Research assets fell back to the investor

Canopy Group The Canopy Group is an American investment and property management firm founded by Ray Noorda in 1995 through the Noorda Family Trust. It is headquartered in Lindon, Utah. At various times it has consisted of, or been known as, Canopy Technolo ...

, and parts of the DR-DOS sources were acquired by

DeviceLogics DeviceLogics was a company in Lindon, Utah, USA, founded in November 2002. Originally doing business mostly under the DeviceLogics name, the company was incorporated as DRDOS, Inc. for legal reasons. The DeviceLogics name was later dropped. Br ...

in 2002. Parts of the embedded modules and uClinux software assets (formerly Rt-Control Inc.) were acquired by Arcturus Networks Inc. in 2002. The router division (formerly Moreton Bay) spun out as SnapGear, and was later acquired by CyberGuard and then Secure Computing, and Secure Computing was acquired by McAfee and as of 2008 was still producing the SnapGear brand of VPN/routers. Lineo Japan, a former Japanese acquisition and at one time wholly owned subsidiary, United System Engineers, Inc. (USE), now trades as Lineo Solutions.

History

Decline

See also

References

Further reading

External links