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Caldera OpenLinux

Linux distribution of the late 1990s and early 2000s

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 3, 2025
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Caldera OpenLinux is a defunct Linux distribution produced by Caldera, Inc. that existed from 1997 to 2002. Based on the German LST Power Linux distribution, OpenLinux was an early high-end "business-oriented" distribution that included features it developed, such as an easy-to-use, graphical installer and graphical and web-based system administration tools, as well as features from bundled proprietary software. In its era, Caldera OpenLinux was one of the four major commercial Linux distributions, the others being Red Hat Linux, Turbolinux, and SuSE Linux.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Caldera OpenLinux” is linux distribution of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Caldera, OpenLinux and Linux, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1997, 2002—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Caldera, OpenLinux and Linux is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “linux distribution of the late 1990s and early 2000s” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 3, 2025. The first chronological checks are 1997 and 2002.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Caldera OpenLinux”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Caldera OpenLinux primary sources, Caldera OpenLinux archive and Caldera research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Caldera OpenLinux”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Caldera OpenLinux” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.