Review of Embedded Linux Book

An Anonymous Coward writes "LinuxDevices.com has just published a very detailed review by Jerry Epplin of the new book by Craig Hollabaugh, Embedded Linux -- Hardware, Software, and Interfacing, published by Addison Wesley Professional. Quoting briefly from the review, "A system developer planning to use Linux for an embedded design is faced with a number of decisions, not the least of which is whether to use a packaged commercial Embedded Linux distribution or to devise a homebrew solution from the available free tools and components. The custom approach has much appeal because of its low cost and radical flexibility, allowing one to choose any approach or tool rather than those chosen by the toolkit vendor. But with this flexibility and low cost comes the chaotic documentation typical of Linux. Thus, books like [this one] fill a significant void . . .""

Comments

Interesting but

[RTFA Man]

The only disagreement I have with this is Hollabaugh's philosophy regarding non-x86 architectures. He contends, "This book's examples show that working with the [ARM-based] MediaEngine and the [PowerPC-based] RPX-CLLF was as easy as working with the [x86-based] MZ104."

This assertion is hard to credit -- even with the author's well-written scripts, acquiring and building cross-development GNU toolchains certainly takes more time than simply using those already provided on your desktop computer.

Hollabaugh had to modify the netcat source in order to compile it for ARM, show that even the author himself has had his share of trouble working with non-x86 architectures. The lesson is certainly not that x86 should be the only architecture considered, but it is fair to say that a slight bias toward x86-based devices is prudent when choosing embedded Linux target platforms because of the maturity of Linux on that architecture.

Re:Interesting but

[alext]

Hmmm, you don't work in this field, do you?

...obscure architectures such as ARM do not require payment, just extra legwork. Have you seen .NET on ARM lately? I don't think so.

ARM will be the single most widely deployed PDA and phone CPU. Period.

.NET on ARM? Try here on the Microsoft site (of all places). To quote:

Windows CE .NET allows developers to select the optimal hardware architecture for their projects by supporting a broad range of processor families, including x86, Xscale, ARM, MIPS and the SH series. Device bring-up is now faster than ever with Windows CE .NET providing numerous board support packages and features such as the Platform Wizard, which provides preconfigured design templates for embedded devices such as handhelds, smart phones, Web pads, retail point-of-sale devices and set-top boxes.

Your devastating critique continues:

What does this [deployment problems] have to do with anything? There are many, _many_ sites that are dedicated repositories of binaries for particular architectures.

There are? I think you'll find that most applications (as opposed to platform builds) are offered in a few builds that the authors know about, and finding any others is down to luck.

Let's try searching for 'linux tetris' in Google, shall we? OK, here's the first one. Oh dear! There's one build, and it's for x86 Mandrake. Care to point to one of your "many, many binary sites" that has it built for a PPC, for example?

And, lastly, our special bonus, the extra-insightful:

Having a VM is a waste of time... Any architecture can be virtualized

Riiiigghhtt. Well, I hope you've taken the opportunity to tell Microsoft, Sun and all those phone vendors that they're wasting their time pushing VMs. I bet they'll be kicking themselves soon! Perhaps you'd like to point to a phone or PDA that runs a foreign CPU instruction set, just as an example?

Why Linux ?

[MosesJones]

Why not Symbian, QNX/a> or any of these ? This unhealthy obsession of "one size fits all" that abounds in the Linux world is exactly the sort of thing that people on Slashdot complain about the Microsoft world. You can't shoehorn these things without getting a poorer product as a result.

Wouldn't it be a better open source project if someone did what Linus did when he wanted to build an Open Source Unix and do the same for a proper RTOS ? By viewing Linux as the "only" solution it turns into the old "everything is a nail if you only have a hammer" discussion.

News for Nerds would be detailing what is happening in the RTOS and embedded world, rather than just being "News about Linux" to the detriment of better technologies. I know it sounds like a rant, but people like Wind River really do know what they are doing, this isn't a crappy Microsoft driven arena, this is where people really do know their shit, and the customer will not accept failure as part of the package.