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 Lineo logo | |
| Industry | Computer software |
|---|---|
| Founded | 20 July 1999 |
| Headquarters | |
Key people | Roger Alan Gross, Bryan Wayne Sparks, Brad Walters [1] |
| Products | Embedix, DR-DOS |
Number of employees | 14 (1999) 50 (2000) [2] 350 (ca. 2001) |
Lineo was a thin client and embedded systems company spun out of Caldera Thin Clients by 20 July 1999. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Caldera Thin Clients, Inc., had been created as a subsidiary of Caldera, Inc., on 2 September 1998. [8] Caldera Thin Clients' original President and CEO was Roger Alan Gross, [8] who resigned in January 1999. In April 1999, Caldera Thin Clients released the no longer needed sources to GEM and ViewMAX under the GNU General Public License (GPL). [9]
In July 1999, Caldera Thin Clients decided on a major refocus on Linux and consequently changed its name to Lineo. [7]
Lineo licensed a stripped down OpenLinux distribution from Caldera Systems and named it Embedix. [7] 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. [7] These technologies included:
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. [11] [12] [ clarification needed ] 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. [7] [13] 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. 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 microcontrollers, through traditional platforms like x86, and up to high end, high availability systems. [13]
Lineo's president and CEO, when it reformed under the new name, became Bryan Wayne Sparks, [3] 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. [3] [8] [7]
Another product was DR-DOS, a DOS–compatible operating system, previously developed by Caldera UK Ltd. between 1996 and 1999 and originally acquired from Novell by Caldera, Inc., on 23 July 1996. [14] [7]
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:
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 and MP/M through "The Unofficial CP/M Web site" [15] [16] [17] [18] a license originally issued by Caldera in 1997. [19] [20] [21]
After some assets were auctioned off in April 2002, by July 2002 the company had reformed as Embedix, Inc. [22] 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. [23] [24] [25]
The remaining Digital Research assets fell back to the investor Canopy Group, and parts of the DR-DOS sources were acquired by DeviceLogics in 2002.
Parts of the embedded modules and uClinux software assets (formerly Rt-Control Inc.) were acquired by Arcturus Networks Inc. in 2002. [26]
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, [27] Inc. (USE), now trades as Lineo Solutions.
DR-DOS is a disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles. Upon its introduction in 1988, it was the first DOS that attempted to be compatible with IBM PC DOS and MS-DOS.
GEM is a discontinued operating environment released by Digital Research in 1985. GEM is known primarily as the native graphical user interface of the Atari ST series of computers, providing a WIMP desktop. It was also available for IBM PC compatibles and shipped with some models from Amstrad. GEM is used as the core for some commercial MS-DOS programs, the most notable being Ventura Publisher. It was ported to other computers that previously lacked graphical interfaces, but never gained traction. The final retail version of GEM was released in 1988.
Digital Research, Inc. was a privately held American software company created by Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit systems like MP/M, Concurrent DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS, DOS Plus, DR DOS and GEM. It was the first large software company in the microcomputer world. Digital Research was originally based in Pacific Grove, California, later in Monterey, California.
MP/M is a discontinued multi-user version of the CP/M operating system, created by Digital Research developer Tom Rolander in 1979. It allowed multiple users to connect to a single computer, each using a separate terminal.
CP/M-86 is a discontinued version of the CP/M operating system that Digital Research (DR) made for the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088. The system commands are the same as in CP/M-80. Executable files used the relocatable .CMD file format. Digital Research also produced a multi-user multitasking operating system compatible with CP/M-86, MP/M-86, which later evolved into Concurrent CP/M-86. When an emulator was added to provide PC DOS compatibility, the system was renamed Concurrent DOS, which later became Multiuser DOS, of which REAL/32 is the latest incarnation. The FlexOS, DOS Plus, and DR DOS families of operating systems started as derivations of Concurrent DOS as well.
FreeGEM released in 1999 is a windowing system based on Digital Research's GEM which was first released in 1985. GEM stands for "Graphics Environment Manager".
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.
UnixWare is a Unix operating system. It was originally released by Univel, a jointly owned venture of AT&T's Unix System Laboratories (USL) and Novell. It was then taken over by Novell. Via Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), it went on to Caldera Systems, Caldera International, and The SCO Group before it was sold to UnXis. UnixWare is typically deployed as a server rather than a desktop. Binary distributions of UnixWare are available for x86 architecture computers. UnixWare is primarily marketed as a server operating system.
ViewMAX is a CUA-compliant file manager supplied with DR DOS versions 5.0 and 6.0. It is based on a cut-down runtime version of Digital Research's GEM/3 graphical user interface modified to run only a single statically built application, the ViewMAX desktop. Support for some unneeded functions has been removed whilst some new functions were added at the same time. Nevertheless, the systems remained close enough for ViewMAX to recognize GEM desktop accessories automatically and to allow some native GEM applications to be run inside the ViewMAX environment. Many display drivers for GEM 3.xx could be used by ViewMAX as well, enabling ViewMAX to be used with non-standard display adapters and higher resolutions than possible using the default set of ViewMAX drivers. Also, Digital Research's SID86, the symbolic instruction debugger that shipped with DR DOS 3.xx and provided dedicated functions to debug GEM applications, could be used for ViewMAX as well.
Multiuser DOS is a real-time multi-user multi-tasking operating system for IBM PC-compatible microcomputers.
Metrowerks was a company that developed software development tools for various desktop, handheld, embedded, and gaming platforms. Its flagship product, CodeWarrior, comprised an IDE, compilers, linkers, debuggers, libraries, and related tools. In 1999 it was acquired by Motorola and in 2005 it was spun-off as part of Freescale, which continues to sell these tools. In 2015, Freescale Semiconductor was absorbed into NXP.
Arachne is an Internet suite containing a graphical web browser, email client, and dialer. Originally, Arachne was developed by Michal Polák under his xChaos label, a name he later changed into Arachne Labs. It was written in C and compiled using Borland C++ 3.1. Arachne has since been released under the GPL as Arachne GPL.
Caldera OpenLinux (COL) is a defunct Linux distribution. Caldera originally introduced it in 1997 based on the German LST Power Linux distribution, and then taken over and further developed by Caldera Systems since 1998. A successor to the Caldera Network Desktop put together by Caldera since 1995, OpenLinux was an early "business-oriented distribution" and foreshadowed the direction of developments that came to most other distributions and the Linux community generally.
A self-booting disk is a floppy disk for home computers or personal computers that loads—or boots—directly into a standalone application when the system is turned on, bypassing the operating system. This was common, even standard, on some computers in the late 1970s to early 1990s. Video games were the type of application most commonly distributed using this technique.
FlexOS is a discontinued modular real-time multiuser multitasking operating system (RTOS) designed for computer-integrated manufacturing, laboratory, retail and financial markets. Developed by Digital Research's Flexible Automation Business Unit in Monterey, California, in 1985, the system was considered to become a successor of Digital Research's earlier Concurrent DOS, but with a new, modular, and considerably different system architecture and portability across several processor families. Still named Concurrent DOS 68K and Concurrent DOS 286, it was renamed into FlexOS on 1 October 1986 to better differentiate the target audiences. FlexOS was licensed by several OEMs who selected it as the basis for their own operating systems like 4680 OS, 4690 OS, S5-DOS/MT and others. Unrelated to FlexOS, the original Concurrent DOS system architecture found a continuation in successors like Concurrent DOS XM and Concurrent DOS 386 as well.
Caldera was a US-based software company founded in 1994 to develop Linux- and DOS-based operating system products.
DOS Protected Mode Services (DPMS) is a set of extended DOS memory management services to allow DPMS-enabled DOS drivers to load and execute in extended memory and protected mode.
General Software was a Washington, USA based creator and supplier of system software headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. It was founded in 1989 by Steve Jones and later incorporated in 1990 as General Software, Inc. In 2008, the company was purchased by Phoenix Technologies, Inc.
DR-WebSpyder is a DOS web browser, mail client and operating system runtime environment that was developed by Caldera UK in 1997. It was based on the DR-DOS operating system and networking components from Novell as well as the Arachne web browser by Michal Polák of xChaos software. The system was designed to run on low-end desktop systems, but being able to boot and execute from disk as well as from ROM or network, it was also tailored for x86-based thin clients and embedded systems with or without disk drives. Using the web browser as its principal user interface, it could be also used for kiosk systems and set-top boxes. It was ported to Linux in 1999 under the name Embrowser and was renamed Embedix Browser in 2000.
[…] We […] have very deep experience with embedding DR DOS, and we've been making millions from that. So we are in a unique position: we are not a startup and we have funding. Our DOS product paid for all our R&D on embedded Linux. […] we are […] evolving our focus from an embedded DOS-only company to an embedded Linux company. […]
Caldera Thin Clients, Inc. released the source code for GEM and ViewMAX under the GNU Public License in mid April, following years of speculation over GEM's future. Caldera bought the GEM sources from Novell along with the DR-DOS in 1996, at the time noting that they may develop GEM into a platform for mobile computers and thin clients. However, these plans were dropped, and GEM was instead released into the open-source community.
[…] Let this email represent a right to use, distribute, modify, enhance and otherwise make available in a nonexclusive manner the CP/M technology as part of the "Unofficial CP/M Web Site" with its maintainers, developers and community. I further state that as Chairman and CEO of Lineo, Inc. that I have the right to do offer such a license. […] Bryan Sparks […]
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