Sharp Will Ship Linux In U.S. PDAs, Feb 19, 2001

Japanese handheld-computer maker Sharp Corp. is taking its popular personal digital assistants overseas using the free open-source Linux operating system.

The viability of combining Linux with an established enterprise Unix will be tested this month, with an open beta release of SCO's Linux Kernel Personality (LKP) for UnixWare 7.

LKP is a software layer that allows Linux applications to take advantage of Unix scalability, clustering and huge memory support by running on the same system and sharing UnixWare kernel functionality.

IBM is building up its Linux development lab near the heart of the Oregon "Silicon Forest" after it bought the largest home-grown computer company in the state and pared it down to almost nothing.

Beaverton [Oregon] has become the place where there's more going on with Linux than anywhere else," said Daniel Frye, director of the IBM's newly formed Linux Technology Center in Beaverton.

Frye said IBM has more than 100 openings in Beaverton and is bringing in IBM staffers from around the country. While employment at the campus is still 20 percent lower than when IBM took over, Frye stressed that the Linux operation is growing.

Linux burst on to the scene a couple of years ago, amid a blaze of publicity promising a simple, reliable and cheap operating system. But the blaze of publicity has gone, replaced instead by a slow and steady progression of the software.

Carl Klitscher, IBM New Zealand system specialist within the enterprise systems group, says about 15 per cent of IBM customers are loading Linux on to IBM machines.

Linus Torvalds' company is set to release Mobile Linux to the open-source community. The OS is touted to cut down on memory requirements on smaller devices such as Net appliances.

 View older news this year: Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
 View news from other years: 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999