I had the pleasure not long ago of installing OpenLinux Base from Caldera. I've been a long time Red Hat and Slakware user, but Caldera's distribution may have begun to change my tastes.

At $60, Caldera's distribution is a tad more expensive than some of the other distributions, but it is still a song when compared to other commercial Unix distributions or when compared to anything from Microsoft. For the business enterprise interested in a powerful, cost-effective workstation or server platform, they must see this.

For me, Caldera installed like a dream. Fortunately, I've had some experience installing Linux and X. But the installation routine does nearly everything I could hope for: it allows full access to fdisk and installation logs, and it lets you install different system components on different partitions. The only thing I would have hoped for was an FTP installation option. NFS installs are supported, which require slightly more knowledge and setup on your part. UMSDOS installs are not supported, but I count that as a plus, not a minus.

The X Window System comes with Metro-X in addition to XFree86. My version came with the 2.0.29 production kernel and sources, which was fine, since the 2.0.30 kernel still breaks a couple of things. Development kernels were also available if desired. The default C library was 5.4.22 I think, and it was nice to have a later libc that worked and didn't break anything.

You'll need a bit more diskspace for a full install with OpenLinux Base. You could use up more than 600MB installing everything. Of course, you can install a minimum system first, then add to it, but that's not really necessary. Caldera uses RPM, so your package dependencies are carefully kept track of for all system additions and subtractions.

OpenLinux joins some of the best features of the Red Hat distribution and the LST distribution from Germany. So, you have two sets of administration tools: Red Hat's control panel and LST's LISA (Linux Installation and System Administration) tool. When you activate the control panel, it may dismay you at first because only some of the icons look familiar. The other icons look like leftovers from RHL 3.0.3 (Picasso). But this is a handy way of telling you which control panel tools work easily with LISA and which do not.

The conflicts between LISA and control panel are probably less than they appear to be. Apparently, LST admins normally edit certain key files (such as /etc/fstab and /etc/hosts) by hand rather than through an admin tool. This inconsistency is a bit of an annoyance, and I hope it will disappear soon, but it is by no means a show stopper. LST offers too many positive contributions to allow this to be more than a momentary distraction.

For one thing, the electronic documentation that comes along with OpenLinux is beyond belief. It's great! At least the electronic documentation, that is. Both LSTs Woven Linux Documentation and the entire LDP is included in various formats. Here is where the real source of what you need to know resides.

The hard copy documentation centers mostly on modifying the desktop in the X Window System. OpenLinux comes with LookingGlass as the default window manager. Actually, LookingGlass is a set of startup scripts applied to fvwm2, which is really the default window manager.

The documentation teaches you how to do just about everything with LookingGlass that you could do with Windows95 and more. There are highly spiffy tools and icons that customize sound, animation, trash cleanup, file management, and many nice finishing touches unknown in other linux distributions.

One weakness in the documentation would be that it doesn't cover many tasks you need to do with a new installation. For example, there's no real discussion of setting up NFS (for an NFS installation), ftp, httpd, and no real discussion of creating a PPP script or compiling a custom kernel. I would also like to see a more technically oriented description of the init process on a Caldera system. Perhaps these features will be added to future editions of the documentation.

It's clear that Caldera caters to the Business Enterprise. They go further than others in offering technical support and in adding finishing touches on an already tightly-woven distribution.

Linux is a very fast moving target; security fixes and library updates come out an a blistering pace. (Hackers often try exploits on their Linux machines before they try them on other platforms, so you get bugfixes for Linux before HP or IBM even know there's a buffer overflow in existence, often times.) But it often isn't worth while for an enterprise to stay on the bleeding edge of library updates, since productivity is the primary goal, not keeping up with the Jones's. Still, security fixes can be applied easily through the use of RPM without breaking system functions, and often without rebooting. Overall, Caldera sticks to a low-maintenance configuration of packages that emphasizes stability and long-term high performance. Managers and sysadmins will enjoy this aspect of OpenLinux.

Fortunately, OpenLinux also comes with most everything you'll need right out of the box. Probably, all the servers and tools and utilities you can think of are included already. No need to buy add-ons. Even Netscape is thrown in. (Very handy for reading HOWTOs and documentation.) And for a desktop workstation, Caldera's office suite with Word Perfect is available for an added cost. But you can just as easily use the StarOffice Suite already bundled with OpenLinux. Managers on a tight budget will appreciate this aspect of Linux in general and OpenLinux in particular.

Purchasers of OpenLinux come out winners. They get a powerful, carefully put together Linux distribution that will do it all. LST and RedHat tools still need some work to function smoothly together, and the hard-copy documentation still needs some more depth, but you'll be happy with how highly polished this distribution is. When you get it installed, you won't have to go through and fix a ton of things that are still broken. (Many commercial Unix distributions still suffer from this malady.)

If you run a business enterprise, you'll love how Caldera caters to your needs. They are committed to promoting Linux in the workplace, and they have done their homework as to what your needs are. Their aim is to support you just as well as a commercial Unix vendor does, and for a mutually agreeable cost. Being a smaller company, Caldera can be profitable for lower costs than larger Unix developers, and that is good for your business too. Of all the Linux developers in existence, I believe Caldera is the most enterprise-oriented, and OpenLinux is the easiest to get started with.