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Qplus, An Open Source Embedded Linux Toolkit

Posted by timothy on from the into-yonder-wristwatch-ho dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In this article at LinuxDevices.com, Jerry Epplin takes a detailed look Qplus, an open source embedded Linux toolkit, examining what the project has accomplished -- and what is still to be done. Epplin concludes that "...The introduction of Qplus is certain to be a welcome development for developers who have been hoping for a pure open source embedded Linux toolkit. It is already an impressively capable kit, with suitably ambitious goals and a well-designed infrastructure to achieve them.""

10 comments

  1. Info for embedded Linux for the hobbyist/newbie? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I've been thinking about getting started in embedded Linux, with the end goal of creating simple devices (little robots or whatever).

    Searching Google for "embedded linux" and similar turns up alot of hits, but most are about as useful as searching for "c"

    It seems like most of what I can find is either information about what devices (SBCs, etc) you can run one of the embedded linux distros on (for example, LinuxDevices mentioned in the article seems to focus on this) or assumes you're already an embedded Linux expert and can hack a kernel like Linus himself.

    I've been thinking about buying something like uCsimm to play around with, but without being able to find any "getting started" type info, I'm concerned it would just be a waste of money.

    So my question is, what are the good resources out there with introductory level coverage of embedded Linux such that some of us might eventually be able to use this fine toolkit? If anyone has any links I'd really appreciate some pointers.

  2. Where does this come from, exactly? by Otter · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I'm surprised to that such a serious looking project emerged from such a mysterious source. If I correctly understand the article and the results of some Googling, there's only a (soon to be Slashdotted) FTP archive containing the code and some PDFs that I can't open, apparently due to Korean character issues.

    Is this project Qt based? The screenshots seem to be from KDE 1.x.

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
    1. Re:Where does this come from, exactly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      regarding the unopenable PDFs, try using xpdf instead of acroread. I had trouble reading the doc pdf with acroread but it worked with xpdf.

  3. DIY solutions by david.given · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Making an embedded Linux is easy --- fundamentally it consists of three binaries: the kernel, ash, and busybox.

    Unfortunately, when you add functionality it gets real complicated real quick. I tried putting together a turnkey Mozilla distro with an embedded Linux, KDrive X, and Mozilla. Did it work? Did it hell. Mozilla would just hang on startup, waiting for some service that wasn't there. I spent ages trying to find out why and eventually had to give up.

    I haven't looked closely at QPlus, because it's in Korea and is Slashdotted out of its tiny mind. What I'd really like is a source-based system, where I can just type 'make' in the top level and it will rebuild everything I'm using, libc and all. Unfortunately the review talks about RPMs, so I suspect it isn't.

    Has anyone here actually used QPlus and can comment on it?

    1. Re:DIY solutions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      "fundamentally it consists of three binaries: the kernel, ash, and busybox."

      Ash is supported internally within busybox :)

    2. Re:DIY solutions by nesthigh · · Score: 2, Informative
      You might be interested in midori linux by Transmetta.It uses a web based configurator, and builds from source.It's been a while since it's been updated, but lately the CVS has been quite active.This is probably due to the flurry of tablet PCs using the transmetta chips.

      next

    3. Re:DIY solutions by j_kenpo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "Unfortunately, when you add functionality it gets real complicated real quick. I tried putting together a turnkey Mozilla distro with an embedded Linux, KDrive X, and Mozilla. Did it work? Did it hell. Mozilla would just hang on startup, waiting for some service that wasn't there. I spent ages trying to find out why and eventually had to give up. "

      Interesting, I was trying to do something similar, but without X. I was using a few other Linux based GUIs, and the one I went with was an embedded GTK add on for GTK 2.0 without X. In the end I gave up and went with FreeDos with Arachne since it booted way faster out of the box, and it did exactly what I wanted.

  4. Embedded Linux - hype versus reality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Some time ago, during the "dot-com" boom, it seemed like everyone with money to blow was hopping on the linux bandwagon, and particularly the "embedded linux" bandwagon. The dispassionate observer would wonder why. After all, Linux was developed for desktop PCs, and it has all of the baggage associated with the Unix platform it was based on, whereas what is needed in the embedded world is rapid development, a low profile, hardware integration, and real-time performance. Linux has none of these things, but these eager venture capitalists didn't seem to mind.

    They split into two groups. One assumed that since linux, unlike established real-time operating systems like those from QNX and Wind River Software, and Microsoft's Windows CE and Windows NT Embedded, was free, as with low-end PC servers, the low cost would make up for the poor performance and lack of features. They just took regular old microcomputer Linux, stuck the embedded label on, and sold it for the minimum price they could ask and still (theoretically, in the distant future) turn a profit.

    The other group assumed that the main power of linux was its name recognition, and developed "enhanced" versions with proprietary add-ons, the total package costing at least as much as a reputable embedded OS, and still having most of the drawbacks of standard linux. They assumed it would sell anyway, because of the trendiness of linux, and the momentary prestige of the "open source" label (even though their products were largely proprietary).

    Thankfully, most of these shysters have been exposed for the frauds they were, and most of these outfits were swiftly liquidated as the bubble burst. But some stragglers such as this outfit apparently haven't caught on. Where are those developers "who have been hoping for a pure open source embedded Linux toolkit"? Is the source on standard linux not open enough? Isn't the standard linux kernel licensed under the GNU GPL, which is as close as you can get in software licenses to the principles of Marx's communist manifesto? No, open source isn't what developers want, its quality and performance, and linux still hasn't caught on. Indeed, most recent improvements to linux are focused on the opposite end of the spectrum, enabling higher performance on large, multiprocessor servers (of course, linux has yet to catch up in this area to such time-tested operating systems as OpenVMS and OS/390, but at least they are trying to catch up). Its well known that much of these changes result in a larger footprint, as well as lower performance on systems with fewer resources, like almost any embedded platform.

    Anyone who is really into embedded design these days is looking at the alternatives. Microsoft Windows CE was built from the ground up to run on embedded hardware. With their innovative Shared Source program, Microsoft has brought most of the alleged advantages of Linux's licensing policy to Windows CE developers, without eliminating the profit motive through viral licensing clauses OR giving their intellectual property away scott-free to competitors. With Windows CE, you get Microsoft's industry-leading Visual Studio development tools, and support for the .NET framework, which is leading to a true paradigm shift in computing. Just compare the smooth user experience of the windows-based Pocket PC platform to kludgy, unusable linux-based devices such as the Sharp Zaurus. Embedded linux is behind the times, and only slips behind further as the years go by. Don't get left behind yourself.

  5. Where can I get it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From MSDN?

    I don't see it there. Why not?

  6. it does what it says it does by wolske · · Score: 1

    from what I've seen... I installed it and set up a project -- it spit out a root file system and a kernel.

    what I'm stuck on is how to utilize what it created. I don't know if I can launch it in bochs/vmware, or how I can roll it up into a binary file and flash it to the platform I want to use (and will undoubtably break in the process).

    I have a AMIT based broadband router, and basically I want to roll my own router/pf/nat on it.