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Microsoft Throws Down Embedded XP Gauntlet

Posted by timothy on from the careful-who-you-get-embedded-with dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Microsoft has published an online document entitled 'Why Microsoft Windows XP Embedded and Not Embedded Linux?', in which embedded XP is compared to Embedded Linux in eight ways. Given that fact that 'Embedded Linux' is not the product of a single dominant vendor, but rather is the result of the collaborative (and competitive) efforts of an entire market consisting of dozens of large and small companies plus thousands of individual developers, LinuxDevices.com is inviting the Embedded Linux Community to respond to 'Why Microsoft Windows XP Embedded and Not Embedded Linux?' through guest editorials and talkbacks."

3 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Just so long... by The+Paradox · · Score: 2, Interesting
    ...as they don't use Embedded XP in stuff like pacemakers.

    Now that would give a whole new meaning to Blue Screen of Death. (Yes, I ripped that off someone else whose name I can't remember. :D)

    Seriously... the problem that *I* see with using embedded Windows is the proprietary issues. With *nix, all you do is grab yourself a kernel at no charge, hire a C programmer, strip it down, and flash it into memory. Lovely, right?

    But Windows... I don't see MS making the source to XP open so that people can make themselves good, small versions to embed into devices. Do you?

    --
    Pain(n): when you're telnetting into a box doing somethin cool, and some luser calls for help with a 'critical error' ad
  2. Competing web browsers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    at least four competing browsers

    So Microsoft is implying that there is absolutely no browser competition on Windows? That's not what they said at their trial.

    I'm assuming that Opera and Netscape are two of these browsers, since they are mentioned later in the article. Those are both available on Windows, which means that Windows has at least 3 web browsers.

  3. Re:I'm reassured by that last line: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I just read the MS article, I was sickend and disgusted. It is exactly that kind of deliberate obtuse and scatalogical FUD Marketing that has turned me away from MS products, after supporting them for a dozen years in busness and corporate environs. Combined with the ever increasing Microsoft OS and application bloat, API secrecy, functionality lies, incompatabilities, instability, consistently poor performance characteristics, brutaly slow fixes and patches updates, vulnerability to attack, poor scalability, poor security model, lockin to a single processor architecture - which has been superceeded by far more powerful processors (Alpha, PPC, UltraSparc, etc), has made me look elsewhere for my computing needs. Linux scales from dozens of embedded processor types, to busness infrastructure computers (Alpha, PPC, x86-32, x86-64, Sparc, UltraSparc) to Mainframe (AS390, AS400, etc) and on to Super computers (Cray - SGI, Sun, HP, Bull, Pyramid, etc). I've tried WinCE v3 programming, no thanks. I'm migrating my IT knowledgebase from commercial Unix and Microsoft OSes to Linux (embedded, desktop and server). Microsoft dominates the x86-32 desktop market and that is where it will die.

    M.A.T.