Caldera's OpenLinux voted number one

Caldera Systems has been given a vote of confidence by Linux resellers, which voted its OpenLinux technology to be the cream of all Linux distributions.

Caldera Systems has been given a vote of confidence by Linux resellers, which voted its OpenLinux technology to be the cream of all Linux distributions.

The survey covered a total of 12 product categories, including operating platforms. Top technology vendors are nominated and honoured in the survey, by a US channel magazine, each year. Selection is determined by market share and sales through solution providers.

As part of this year's evaluations, solution provider partners rated their views on more than 40 vendors and their services, based on 11 separate criteria, including areas such as products/pricing, support and partnership.

The final results were drawn from around 4600 finished reports submitted by resellers from around the world. Kerry Brock, vice president of marketing for Caldera Systems, was delighted with the result, calling it "positive" for Caldera.

"This is important validation for OpenLinux," he said, adding that the results were from individual companies that knew Caldera and recognised that the company provided "solid" Linux solutions for business.

"We are committed to delivering the best in open source technology, and this reseller report underscores it," he said. "It recognises the excellent products and services Caldera is providing."

The news will come as a welcome boost to the company, as Linux creator Linus Torvalds posted the near-final release of the Linux 2.4 kernel to the kernel.org website.

In making the so-called 2.4.0 Test 10-Final release available to developers, Torvalds noted that the beta has no known "show-stopper" bugs. If testers do not discover any serious bugs, Torvalds could release the final 2.4 kernel some time this month.

Torvalds wanted to release the version last year but said the addition of new features took longer than expected. The developments include support for high-end servers and features such as PC universal serial bus standards.

Caldera has appointed Robert Bench, former president at Web-miles.com, as chief financial officer. Bench replaces Alan Hansen, who will move to a local software firm.