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.

[nb 1] By 1994, under CEO Ray Noorda's purview, Novell Corsair was a project run by Novell's advanced technology group that sought to put together a desktop metaphor with Internet connectivity and toward that end conducted research on how to better and more easily integrate and manage network access for users.

At the time, the Internet was dominated by Unix-based operating systems, but the Novell group saw the Unixes of the day as being too hardware intensive, too large, and charging too much in license fees.

They became convinced that Linux offered the best possible answer for the operating system component, and started building code towards that purpose, including contributing work on IPX networking for NetWare and Wine compatibility layer for Windows.

[10] At another point in time, Caldera OpenLinux was also available on a retail basis, in the form of a CD-ROM for installing Linux on a PC that sold for US$49.

[10] A review in Computerwoche assessed the initial Caldera OpenLinux release as providing an easy-to-use distribution at an attractive price-to-performance point for those exploring Linux.

[19] The improvements provided by the Lizard installer led to the technology publication Linux Journal giving Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 its top award, Product of the Year.

[26] An extensive review of Caldera OpenLinux 3.1 in PC Magazine gave it 3 out of 5 'discs', behind the Red Hat and SuSE products which each got 4 out of 5.

[1] As PC Magazine wrote at the time, "Unusual for the Linux world, Caldera makes a strong cost-of-ownership argument in the corporate environment."

It also said: "Unparalleled support and a wide range of products, including e-commerce solutions, make Caldera OpenLinux Server 3.1 a very attractive choice.

Caldera's clear distinction between client and server distributions underlines the company's endeavor to appeal to the business community.

[2] By 2002, in the wake of the dot com bust, the Linux side of Caldera International was losing money badly; it was spending four times as much as it received in revenue.

[30] Caldera International was further disadvantaged in that the Unix side of its business contributed most of its revenue and represented the products its resellers had the largest incentive to sell.

[35] This effectively meant the end of the LST-/Caldera-based OpenLinux technology itself,[8] and the Caldera Deutschland GmbH office in Erlangen was shut down.

In June 2002, Caldera International had a change in management, with Darl McBride taking over as CEO from Ransom Love.