Tokyo – Eight consumer electronics companies announced here the establishment of the CE Linux Forum (CELF), which will work to develop extensions to the Linux operating system for greater use with CE products.
Companies involved in CELF include Hitachi, Matsushita, NEC, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba.
The group will publish formalized requirements for the extensions and will accept and evaluate for support open-source solutions that meet the published requirements. CELF will also promote broad usage of Linux for CE products.
According to a statement announcing the group, IBM, which has used Linux solutions and ‘supports open standards ecosystems, is pursuing membership and plans to be an active participant in the CELF. ‘
Linux is widely used today in personal computers and network servers, and has been selected as an OS for CE products.
Among initial areas of interest to CELF are the following:
- Further improving the startup and shutdown time
- Improving real-time capabilities
- Reducing ROM/RAM size requirements
- Improving efficiency of power management
CELF’s stated ‘main activities’ will include ‘defining requirements for a variety of extensions in Linux based CE products, collaborating and reaching consensus with open source projects as well as with the Linux community, thereby promoting the proliferation of CE Linux based digital electronics in the electronics industry.’
