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Manufacturing With Linux?
lamanite asks: "I work for a large manufacturing company and we're looking to upgrade some of our older DOS-based systems to something more modern, specifically to support TCP/IP. However, we still need time-critical control over interrupts and low-level I/O. We're looking at VxWorks, but their licensing terms are pretty hefty. Are there any Linux distributions that would be applicable to our needs while still supporting common hardware platforms (x86 and 3Com/Intel network adapters)?"
RTLinux should be able to fit your needs. The folks atLineo can give you consulting on a complete solution and help guide you along the way.
Bingeldac denies any responsibility for the
spelling and/or grammatical errors above.
It is left as an exercise for the ignorant to search their "shrink wrap" Microshit License Agreements for the "... do NOT use this product for medical, mission-critical, aviation, nuclear power plant applications ..." don't blame us statements.
Too bad trial lawyers contribute [bribe???] so much to corrupt democrap politicians (e.g. Clinton-Gore). Only through them is it likely that Linus will be sued for ignorant use of Linux.
In summary, your lame example of robots attacking workers resulting in Linus getting sued is akin to the real-life lawsuits against firearms manufacturers ... instead of sueing a gun-maker why not sue the person pulling the trigger? ... Instead of sueing Linus & Co. why not sue the "Linux Solution Provider" & "Linux Solution Customer" for not performing due dilegence on Software Quality Assurance and Fault Checking?
Maintain a questioning attitude
I believe Juanita
The impression I got from reading about systems programming on MS-DOS was that it's in no way a real-time OS. The sarcastic phrase applied to it most often was "same day service" I think. :-) Note that this was mainly before my time, just casual reading on my part so I could be wrong. Anyway, based on my impression of DOS, I doubt linux would have higher latency on response times (provided you don't lard up the machine(s) with extraneous daemons and whatnot).
There is a lot activity going on around embedded and real-time linux now. Heck, the publishers of the Linux Journal just started a new magazine focused entirely on this area. So if you do need hard real-time (?and if you're doing ok on DOS now you may not?), there's probably a dozen/score/tripleassload of companies eager to help you with soft and hard-ware to make the switch. c.f. Lineo, Hard Hat Linux, et al.
One other poster mentioned QNX. Keep in mind that I personally have no experience with it, but somebody on a local unix group's mailing list was saying that a) it's a cool OS, but b) it's dev environment is kinda wierd to a UNIX developer. Something to maybe think about/ look into further if you're planning development in-house.
Good luck!
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Do not attempt to manufactore with the linus!!!!!!!!!!
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