"DSPsoft Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA) has unveiled UnixCE, a small
footprint "Linux-like" operating system for resource constrained
Internet appliances and mobile devices. The company's founder and
CEO, Vasant Kanchan, claims the new OS is "the smallest Unix-like
kernel that contains a built-in X-Windows compatible API." Kanchan
says UnixCE can run out of just 340KB of RAM on an i386 CPU. At
that size, it includes a Fat32 file system, TCP/IP stack, Unix APIs
(signals, vm, mmap, etc.), core Xlib, plus support for zipped
executables and libraries. A demo version of UnixCE (v1.1) that
runs on a desktop PC is available for download (binaries
only)."
"Kanchan founded DSPsoft in early 1998, with an intention to
address the needs of the emerging "appliance market" based on his
previous experience with embedded systems and DSP technologies.
Perceiving Linux to be deficient for the tight RAM and Flash
memory and processor budgets of mobile devices, and relative to the
real-time performance needs of mobile device communications and
streaming audio, Kanchan decided to develop a small real-time
Unix/Linux compatible kernel and equip it with the basic tools
needed for "cheap Internet appliance" applications like cell phones
and PDAs."