Red Hat, 3G Lab Developing Wireless OS

Popular Linux company Red Hat and UK-based 3G Lab announced Monday plans to create an operating system to be run on wireless devices. Based around Red Hat's eCos, the embedded configurable operating system, the new OS will power Web-enabled mobile phones. The software will be open source, thus allowing developers to download the API and create applications designed for the OS.

The new software is slated to be dubbed eCos/M3, and will have specific features geared towards improving battery life and ensuring smooth streaming media content. While suggested to be the first "wireless Linux," the OS will in fact not be based on Linux or any derivative. eCos is able to run on devices with a much smaller memory footprint than that needed by Linux.

The first smartphones will debut later this year, designed for displaying e-mail, playing video clips, maintaining a calendar and more. Red Hat and 3G however, have plans to make their wireless OS different. With eCos/M3, manufacturers will be allowed to customize the software to the needs of the specific cell phone, rather than having one generic version for each device.