The Change Mariner

Linux Goes Consumer

InternetNews.com:

Building on an alliance established in December to collaborate on the development of open source operating system Linux for digital consumer electronics, partners Sony and Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic) Tuesday brought together six other firms to create the CE Linux Forum (CELF).

Sony and Matsushita, together with NEC, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung, Sharp and Toshiba said they envision CELF as a platform for discussing and formalizing the requirements for extensions to a Linux platform geared to consumer electronics (CE) devices. Those could include cell phones, PDAs, set-top boxes, Internet radios, residential gateways, automotive telematics, even Karaoke machines and other audio/visual devices.

... CELF said it will publish requirements for Linux extensions, and will accept and evaluate open source solutions that support the published requirements. CELF will also take a lead in promoting Linux for consumer electronics.

Its initial goals include improving startup and shutdown time, improving Linux's real-time capabilities, reducing ROM/RAM size requirements, and improving the efficiency of power management.

... Sony is no stranger to using Linux for consumer electronics. It has already released a Linux Kit for its Playstation 2 game console, and utilized Linux as the operating system of its CoCoon series of products. CoCoon, which stands for COnnected COmmunity On Network, encompasses gateway devices with large capacity hard disks and broadband connectivity -- including WEGA televisions, the aforementioned Playstation 2 console, personal video recorders (PVR), VAIO computers, and "mobile devices" like phones.