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Embedded Linux Flexes Its Muscles @ ESC 2001
A reader writes "This is Rick Lehrbaum's "traditional" report on "all things Linux" at the Embedded Systems
Conference which took place during the week of April 9, 2001 in San Francisco, California.
Lehrbaum briefly describes many of the Embedded Linux oriented exhibits, takes us on a photo
tour of some cool Embedded Linux based devices that were being shown off, and offers his
assessment of the current state of the Embedded Linux industry. There's even a "best of show
award" for the "geekiest demo" at ESC!
Full report is on Linuxdevices.com"
I did however like the gadgets, but taking a look at the last week, with all the Linux related companies going to the dogs, and 4 distributions going "kaput" within less than 6 months time, I would be looking at other alternatives to Linux, especially if my business were going to depend on them.
What do failing distributions and/or companies have to do with the viability of Linux as an embedded OS?
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Looking at your towering spelling intellect, not to mention your COWardness, I'm not too worried :-)
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Uhh, it's called BlueCat.
Last time I was at a con, I got a 'demo' copy of Bluecat. Their licensing agreement makes it clear that it's a proprietary development environment based on Linux.
BTW, you have have a 'Closed Source' Linux based OS. All the GPL says is that you have to redistribute source with any changes you make.
It seems like there are a couple of camps of embedded developers. Folks who are developing low-volume or higher cost products talk about the big 3 operating systems like there is nothing else out there. For them, there isn't.
Likewise, folks working in the high-volume, low cost arena scoff at the big names - the cost associated with a license for VxWorks or WinCE would be prohibitive, and the resource usage would be as well (people frequently ship Nucleus and ThreadX systems measured in KILOBYTES of RAM+ROM). A lot of folks wouldn't even recognize that an operating system is running on these devices - but it's there, even if it's just pared down to a kernel for inter-thread communication (becuase the overhead for PROCESSES is just too high!).
I guess the trick to interpreting statements like "the big 3" is to understand that the "embedded" space is big, and that folks who work in a fixed area of the space tend to have a pretty myopic view of options in operating systems, since they're only focusing on the tools that are appropriate to the job at hand.
I find it interesting that much of this talk about embedded devices fails to mention i/o devices. Some may say that an i/o device's software should be written bare metal with little os at all. While this can be a great option for performance reasons, it requires a very talented staff and a lot of time. This may not be an option, especially for a first generation product from a young company. As the I/O workload is pushed away from the main CPU to add on cards, I/O devices become more complex. The choice of an embedded operating system becomes more and more important as developers look at the laundry list of features and performance requirements. Fibre Channel cards and NICs keep moving faster and faster. PCI 64-bit 66 Mhz will be yielding to PCI-X and double data rate PCI-X. InfiniBand 4x and 12X links will not only push data faster but create many new configuration and manageability issues for i/o devices. All these things make creating high quality i/o device very difficult. A report on what embedded OS's work best for things like Gigabit NICs, Fibre Channel RAID, Network Attached Storage, etc. would be very interesting. Why don't we see more of this? I guess it's no fun to report on something that doesn't have a pretty screen with a web browser on it.
-- soldack
Unless one rewrote the kernel from scratch, without using a single line of GPL'ed code, wouldn't it be illegal to have a closed source embedded Linux? And if it is rewritten from scratch, without a single line from Linus' kernel, then it's not Linux, is it?
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
As with all these wireless PDA's and phones, they do us no good unless they can talk to eachother. I realy hope that bluetooth will kick off. I would realy hate to see someone like MS or Intel fuck it all up by introducing it's own standard and delaying technology another 3 years. If my PDA can't download the addressbook from my laptop then get my phone to dial the number then I still think it's behind. As the technology advances we should all advance the "global wireless infrastucture".
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
Would you really want the award for "geekiest demo?" I dunno if I would....
The anti-salmon
I just thought a view people might want to read a review from a *gasp* non-linux point of view
Huh? I can say: the big three of server operating systems are Solaris, Linux and NT.
) to do. Hell even IBM jumped into the QNX mix. You should read about the uses companies like NASA and Motorolahave for QNX instead of thinking about only running a web and mail server. (theres more to an OS than that you know)
You should put your money where your mouth is, and show some supportive proof of these big three. e.g., Yahoo, Apache, Sony's Japan website, formerly Hotmail use FreeBSD, IBM, NYSE, American Express use AIX.
Your post is pointless since thread does not discuss what will be run on the server(s). e.g. If your core webdesigners (programmers included) are extremely comptent with Oracle, Story Server (for Yahoo like pages) your not gonna run your site on NT unless your a dumbass and like headaches.
Aside from that there are many instances of Windows underperforming as a server which sometimes can't cut it, so the mere mention of them is painful
If you look at units shipped, QNX isn't even on the map. They've just started some bizzare marketing blitzes lately (starting with the whole Amiga switcheroo), so wannabes like yourself who know nothing about the embedded market know about QNX.
You should do some research before posting... QNX is used for stuff Windows is likely not competent/reliable/trustworthy(crashmasterWindows
360 degrees of Karma
What do failing distributions and/or companies have to do with the viability of Linux as an embedded OS?
Snowball effects. Think about the following scenario, Linux altogether dropping as a whole (could happen, did happen under the NeXT project) and others.
Well reading some of the threads on Embedded Linux, you would know its not going to be an Open Sourced OS as typical Linux is, which means, as a developer, you don't have the luxury of modifications of anything. Which may not be so bad...
Pay for play Linux? Why would I want to pay for for an embedded OS when I could use others that are semi-standards in the industry of embedded OS' (QNX, which Motorola uses, NASA, etc.)
What make this the safe bet when under standard Linux, cmopanies are going bonkers, whats to say an embedded Linux won't go under as well?
360 degrees of Karma
You just put it in things you *REALLY* want to work.
;)
/.'er would have access to tinker with them is sort of placing candy in the eyes of a dieter or something similar.
Indeed it would be a nice idea, however if I'm not mistaken, these embedded Linux systems won't be open sourced, so tweaking code is out of the question
Again, maybe I underposted before or something who knows (lack of caffeine), these embedded Linux OS', from my perspective, are not your typical download-for-free-to-play-with-geek-friendly Linux distributions, so to sort of post it here as if, the average
360 degrees of Karma
I don't expect the user to fix it for me. In the same vein, if there's a driver bug or even a core flaw in Linux it's not my customer's problem. It's mine. Having the source and being able to contribute a patch back so that others won't be bitten is a good thing. It's been a while but I don't recall being able to do that with QNX.
Agreed, but then there lies the question of actually knowing what your internals are like, and as with an OpenSource based system versus closed source binaries, you have that flexibility to fix, change things on your own.
Thats a benefit for using an Open Source OS. Whats more is, you won't have to wait for fixes to be assessed, and patches released, with a good administrative handling of the servers in question, things could be done on your/their own.
Also beneficial to using an Open Source OS as opposed to binary based, is you have the flexibility to audit the codes for maximum reliability, e.g. you can tweak it to your needs to make it faster, more secure, etc.
360 degrees of Karma
that enables the inclusion of gnome-core inside the linux kernel (expected for 2.6) you have a RTOS with a very small memory footpring. Now talk about bloated!
;)) typical desktop OS', web based servers.
Now your asking a Linux vendor to take away from giving options to use something other than Gnome. Why not QT? Thats an argument for the masses. But the thought of just using a de facto standard under Linux would be taking away the fun from it all.
But I should also note as in my other post, these aren't the typical "freebie-hobbyist" variants of Linux. Which also makes me point out, why should someone choose to go with embedded Linux over typical Linux, when in harsh reality, not everyone needs an embedded system. Sure its tech-chick, but lets get realistic these are not you (father's oldsmobile
360 degrees of Karma
so here I submit it as a followup:
Terapin 'mine'
it does mp3, usb, ethernet, pcmcia, audio in/out, 16x4 lcd display, video out and 10GB hard drive.
I'll certainly be watching for this one!
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
#incldue
#include <rants.h>
#incldue <clues.h>
Just to be absolutely clear about what I'm saying, in my opinion the "big three" embedded OSes are, at the moment: (1) VxWorks, (2) Embedded Linux, (3) Embedded Windows -- or (1) VxWorks, (2) Embedded Windows, (3) Embedded Linux -- depending on how you count.
I guess he's never heard of/used QNX, ChorusOS Nucleus, or ThreadX. I did however like the gadgets, but taking a look at the last week, with all the Linux related companies going to the dogs, and 4 distributions going "kaput" within less than 6 months time, I would be looking at other alternatives to Linux, especially if my business were going to depend on them.
© Gbonics changing the futurismisms of vocabularities worldomwide
360 degrees of Karma
Interesting link to Kevin Dankward's rant on the fragmentation of embedded linux. It is a response to the "Embedded Linux Consortium"'s proposed standard, which he claims:
"As stated, the ELC proposal will allow closed source alternatives to be certified. An OS with runtime royalties can be certified; an unreliable and unrobust alternative can be certified; an OS with poor networking can be certified; an OS with few drivers and tools can be certified; an OS with a small number of trained programmers can be certified."
That's the first time I've seen anyone in the mainstream mention a certified, closed source version of Linux. There is certainly a very strong push between a few vendors to become the "industry standard for embedded linux"... but closed source?
yuck. how could any linux company be that stupid?
Hopefully he's just being alarmist.