Eight consumer electronic companies establish "CE Linux Forum"

BERLIN, July 1 (PROTEXT/PRNewswire) - New forum to focus onthe establishment and promotion of "Linux based digital consumerelectronic products"

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Sony Corporation,Hitachi, Ltd., NEC Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics,Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Sharp Corporation, and ToshibaCorporation, today announced the establishment of the "CE [1]Linux Forum (CELF)". CELF will discuss and formalise requirementsfor extensions to Linux [2] to meet the needs of CE products suchas audio/visual products and cellular phones, etc. CELF willpublish such requirements and will accept and evaluate opensource solutions that support to meet the published requirements.CELF will also promote broad usage of Linux for CE products. IBM,an industry leader in Linux solutions and supporter of openstandards ecosystems, is pursuing membership and plans to be anactive participant in the CELF.

Linux is widely used today in personal computers and networkservers, and has been selected as an OS for CE products. OnDecember 18th, an announcement was made to develop Linux for CEproducts and to establish a forum with the aim to enhance Linuxplatform for consumer electronics devices.

CELF will first aim to improve the following:- Further improve the start-up and shutdown time- Improve real-time capabilities- Reduce ROM/RAM size requirements- Improve efficiency of power management

CELF's main activities will include defining requirements fora variety of extensions in "Linux based CE products",collaborating and reaching consensus with open source projects aswell as with the Linux community, thereby promoting theproliferation of CE Linux based digital electronics in theelectronics industry.Information and member lists details will be available at:http://www.celinuxforum.org[1] CE: Consumer Electronics[2] Linux: POSIX compatible open source OS developed in 1991 byLinus Torvalds, who was a graduate student of HelsinkiUniversity. The source code is released under the GPL license andthe development continues [by expansion or maintenance] byvolunteers all over the world.Linux is a registered trademark owned by Linus Torvalds in the USand other areas.CE Linux Forum OfficeTEL: +1-408-955-4941E-mail: office@celinuxforum.orgMatsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.Public Relations GroupTEL: +81-3-3578-1237FAX: +81-3-3437-2776Sony CorporationCorporate CommunicationsTEL: +81-3-5448-2200FAX: +81-3-5448-3061Hitachi, Ltd.Public Relation Dept.,Ubiquitous Platform SystemsTEL: +81-3-3506-1573FAX: +81-3-3506-1602NEC CorporationCorporate Communications DivisionNEC CorporationTEL: +81-3-3798-6511FAX: +81-3-3457-7249Royal Philips ElectronicsCE Corporate CommunicationsTEL: +31-40-27-35677FAX: +31-40-27-32729Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.Corporate Public Relations GroupTEL: +82-2-727-7856FAX: +82-2-727-7826Sharp CorporationCorporate Public Relations DivisionTEL: +81-6-6625-3006FAX: +81-6-6628-1667Toshiba CorporationCorporate Communications OfficeTEL: +81-3-3457-2105FAX: +81-3-5444-9202

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