The Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) quietly made its first baseline Linux source code release on Nov. 24, 2003, marking the consortium's first steps towards fulfilling its charter to make Linux more useful in consumer electronics devices.

The initial source tree includes improvements to startup and shutdown time, real-time functionality, ROM/RAM size requirements, and power management features, according to CELF. It is available for download by the general public, and non-members of CELF are invited to use, comment on, and contribute to the source code, which is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

For now, the CELF kernel supports only the ARM and MIPS architectures “but will grow over time as additional support is provided by forum members,” according to CELF.

Nearly all options in CELinux are configurable as CONFIG_xxx options in the .config file. It aims to include the following requested features:

• Preemptible kernel
• Lock-break
• O(1) Scheduler
• Parallel and deferred I/ O initialization
• BH processing elimination
• High resolution timers
• Execute-in-place (XIP)
• Power Management Framework
• CPU Frequency Scaling
• Clock rate change on non-preemptible regions
• Deferred periodic kernel process
• Protected RAMFS

The CELF says it plans to continue discussing its extensions to Linux with the goal of publishing its first formal specification before the first anniversary of the forum (July 1, 2004).

Since its inception, CELF has gained 22 additional companies. Five companies — IBM, Hewlett-Packard Company, LG Electronics Inc., Motorola, and Nokia Corporation — have joined the Steering Committee that was originally formed by Hitachi, Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd, NEC Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Sharp Corporation, Sony Corporation, and Toshiba Corporation.

Scott Smyers, chairman of the CELF Steering Committee, commented on the release of the initial source tree: “I look forward to working within the established process of the CELF to reach consensus on the needs and requirements of the CE industry, and I further look forward to working with the CELF member companies and with the open source community to deliver top of class solutions to those needs through an open-source based, open and fair process.”

CELF's CELinux source, mailing list, Wiki, and a whitepaper are available here.

 
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