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No, it has nothing to do with ARM. It's a different architecture: http://www.emdebian.org/~zumbi/mx53/u-boot-imx/doc/README.NDS32

why don't they use http://www.emdebian.org/ instead of reinventing again and again yet another distro

In other words...
http://www.debian.org/ports/arm/
http://www.emdebian.org/
?

Encapsulation, scope, etc etc, is 101 stuff. I find it hard to believe any programmer, OSS or not, doesn't know them. Are we talking script kiddies perhaps?

Stripped down Liunx is far from a myth. (Try 50MB DSL http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/) That why it's used in embedded devices. Some of which you can find at:

http://www.linuxdevices.com/

You don't have to start with a big fat distro. A full desktop system is silly for kiosk, I would argue so is x86.

Yes all this can be said for WindowCE (which you should be using over XP any day for this kind of thing!!!), but the difference is that Linux is the same OS, from watch to super computer.

D-Bus dependencies don't seam that crazy if you don't count the all the bindings (if you are including Mono, what did you expect?)

http://www.emdebian.org/packages/search.php?package=dbus

It isn't. OTOH you can check the debian-based distro familiar for embedded devices (for PDAs such as the HP ipaq for example).

There's also emdebian, but I don't know if it'll change its different arch support after the mainstream Debian decides to drop some of them.

I tried a linux rescue floppy (which I had handy) the freshmeat compact flash linux project, and Pee Wee linux. I had no luck with any of them, and suspected that my two P3 motherboards were not capable of booting off of CF (a suggestion that was common on the forums). I was at the time looking for "Compact Flash" distributions, not "Embedded," but it looks like someone is working on an Embedded Debian project.

Good thing that's not off the ground yet. I don't have much hair left from the last attempt.

Which *BSD did you use?

So, how does this compare to
Emdebian QPlus whatever Monta Vista has this year.

Wow, Linux is being used in a product that Windows isn't even targeted towards. I don't think that Microsoft cares too much if linux is used in these types of devices. Especially when they still own 95% of the desktop market.

Oh, Microsoft cares all right. But they are fighting an uphill battle against free-and-open in that space. MS has lost a lot of ground to Linux there, is continuing to lose more, and there's really no hope of a comeback.

Actually, those componentized versions of windows were very much the right idea, and Microsoft had an advantage there for a while.

Fortunately for the developer community, Young Hoon Kim, a G.Mate programmer, ported X to the YOPY and made it available "unofficially." Finally, giving up trying to hold back water, G.Mate agreed an X environment would become the new base installation for the YOPY, dumping W Windows. In addition, a 2.4.x kernel would be made available, largely based on the work done by the Handhelds.org group.

I submitted Young Hoon Kim's interview to /. last time. He's doing a good job to steer G.Mate getting back on right track. The problems with YOPY is that they don't know what makes a Linux handheld different. The following paragraph gave you an answer.

This shift in direction demonstrates (again) that introducing an incompatible technology without strong justification just won't work. Particularly amongst open/free programmers, no one is willing to invest in your new technology unless its worth their time. While W may be faster than X on a 206-MHz machine, is it worth the loss of compatibility? Empirically, NO!

See that NO? The key is to have an open platform PDA. G.Mate didn't see it before. That's the reason why it worth our time waiting, regardless of the fact that it's coming late.

If you want a consumer product, go for iPaq. It's there and it's good; but open source developers probably won't be interested in writing for CE.

Of course, unless your intention is to hack this iPaq like in Embedded Debian project; but then again, you've to pay for a preinstalled Windows CE.
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