Linux consortium to establish standard OS

NEWS The major players in the Linux market have joined forces to establish guidelines for a standard Linux operating system. The Free Standards Group combines two informal bodies, the Linux Standard Base project and the Linux Internationalisation Initiative. Participants in the new group include Caldera Systems, Corel, IBM, Red Hat Software, SAP, SuSE Linux and TurboLinux. The former head of the Linux Standard Base Project, Dan Quinlan, will chair the new group. According to Quinlan the group will initially focus on developing Version 1.0 of the Linux Standard Base, a specification guideline aimed at software developers. Currently 65 to 70 per cent of Linux applications run on versions of the standard operating system. The first version of the system based on the standard specification should increase that number to over 90 per cent, Quinlan claimed. The specification will target binary compatibility of Linux applications running on Intel servers, but there are plans to develop versions for other hardware types. A draft of the new specification should be released next month for public review and a final version is planned for the end of the year.