MontaVista announced that its Linux Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) 5.0 is the first Linux distro to be certified for the Linux Foundation's (LF's) Linux Standard Base (LSB) 3.0, the LF's Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) 4.0, and IPv6. The claimed hat trick came when it received LSB 3.0 certification this week.

Although most of the major desktop distros have earned the LSB 3.0 badge, and all Linux distros offer some level of LBS compatibility, MontaVista Linux CGE appears to be the first embedded Linux distribution to gain the 3.0 seal, according to LF's LSB registration page. LSB comprises a set of standards meant to enable application portability across all LSB-compliant Linux distributions.

MontaVista registered CGE against the CGL 4.0 specification in early April, according to documents available on the LF's CGL registration page, but did not publicize the event at the time. The registration was reported here over a week later when network equipment provider (NEP) Performance Technologies (PT) announced that its NexusWare Linux distribution met the CGL 4.0 requirement. Wind River's carrier-grade distribution was the the first distro to register as 4.0-compliant back in early February, and it is the only other product to do so.

According to the IPv6 Forum's (IPv6) registration list, Montavista Linux CGE is the only Linux distribution to achieve certification for Internet Protocol version 6, although Wind River has earned the certification for its VxWorks Network Stack. Other OS vendors on the list include Green Hills for its Integrity RTOS and Microsoft Vista and Windows Server 2008. PT claims to support IPv6 with NexusWare 12, but the distro is not on the certification list.

Developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), IPv6 is replacing IPv4, which has been in place since before the invention of the World Wide Web. IPv6 greatly expands the number of available IP addresses, while improving routing, network autoconfiguration, ad hoc encryption, and many other elements. The U.S. government's requirement for government customers to use IPv6 went into effect on June 30th, but according to reports, most government offices are continuing to use IPv4 as they slowly phase in the newer technology.

Ted Ts'o

More on the LSB

The LF announced the CGL 4.0 spec soon after its formation, which resulted from a merger of the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group (FSG). At the time, it announced that the OSDL-generated spec would be absorbed under the Linux Standard Base process, which was the core standard overseen by the FSG. When legendary Linux kernel developer Ted Ts'o (pictured at right) joined the Linux Foundation a year and a half ago for a two year stint as fellow and chief platform strategist, he announced he would focus his efforts on the LSB, with the aim to make it easier for ISVs (independent software vendors) to target multiple Linux distributions.

LSB 4.0 is due to arrive in beta form in October, according to the LF's LSB page. New features are said to include improvements in support for:

• glibc 2.4
• Binary compatibility with LSB 3.x
• Multimedia: higher-level frameworks
• Accessibility
• Java
• Packaging
• Crypto API
• CURL

MontaVista calls its CGE product the “most widely-deployed Linux in the carrier grade market.” Launched in 2002, CGE became the first distribution to register CGL compatibility a year later. The product was rev'd to version 5.0 in November.

Stated Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, “With its LSB 3.0 certification and CGL 4.0 compliance, MontaVista has shown its commitment to upholding community standards.”

 
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