LiMo Foundation has announced LiMo 4, it's latest Linux distro for smartphones, handsets and other mobile devices. It's a free operating system and hardware independent, so device makers and telecom operators can tweak the OS for their offerings.

The LiMo distro will be available for download in July, the organization said in a release. A number of telecom operators seem to have good things to say about the OS, which is interesting.

Telecom operators still depend on device makers to provide the OS (most of handsets get Android), so this could be the distro that breaks their dependence on handset makers. NTT DoCoMo is popular for its specialized data services, and is a partner for LiMo, so this distro could be on their backend and handsets. LiMo says handsets with the OS will reach shelves later this year.

The GNOME Foundation has also chimed in: "We're delighted that free and open source software from the GNOME project is being used in LiMo 4 and we look forward to working even more closely with LiMo members in the future," a GNOME exec says.