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

Two books are better than one

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been reading Flash Enabled, and it's a good companion to this book. It covers the hardest part, the user interface using tools like Macromedia Flash. I submitted my review, but Slashdot doesn't like Flash or perhaps the fact that is book covers other devices such as the Pocket PC.

You can read more about Flash Enabled here.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735 711771

Has anybody done a project like the scenario?

[Sheetrock]

One of the things that seems to come up consistently in this review is the concept that employing Linux as part of an embedded system solution will be more difficult than buying a commercial product and tailoring it. Does anybody have any real-world example where this was (or wasn't) the case?

Looking at the scenario the book presents, I'd expect to invest a good deal of time in customizing anything to fit the requirements, and it just seemed to me like Linux is far enough along that there wouldn't be a huge difference between trying to make that fit against trying to do, say, a WinCE solution.

Re:Interesting but

[dbarclay10]

Use Debian.

Not only is Woody (the next Debian/stable release, due Real Soon Now) being released for alpha, arm, m68k, i386, sparc, powerpc, mips, mipsel, hppa, ia64, and s390 (that's 11 architectures, friends), but in order for an architecture to actually be officially released, the massive bulk of all packages have to be compiled and ready on that platform - with _the same version as every other architecture_. You won't be getting XFree 3.3.6 on PPC and XFree 4.2.0 on i386. You'll be getting the same.

Oh, right, "not only" :) Most complex packages, which include extensive patches, are organised in a very nice way. 'apt-get source libc6', go into the new directory, and poke around in debian/, there should be a directory there with all the patches that are applied during the build process.

Nice and easy to seperate, pick 'n choose, what have you.