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Linux's Future As The Next Embedded OS
CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has an interview with Jim Ready about how embedded systems differ from desktops and servers, and how they will help shape the future of Linux. From the article: Your car, for instance, now has telematics -- mapping, navigation, and entertainment systems -- that clearly present a very sophisticated user interface... The neat part for me now is that embedded systems can consist of Linux applications with beautiful graphical interfaces."
any idea of cc terms that run linux? i know a few companies that make them, but they all have drawbacks.
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in the Computer Science and Computer Engineering programs we've been building devices and such (simple things really) for a while that all use Linux as their embedded OS. Its the only thing that makes sense to me to be able to get the full power out of whatever device you're building...assumming of course it's complex enough to warrent a full OS at all. -Kiriwas
EOM
NetBSD runs on everything and is tight, as some of these things are rather resource-strapped.
OpenBSD is secure, doesn't turn on what isn't needed, etc. Thus, it makes a lot of sense for a server.
FreeBSD tries to get a good portion of code running, and is generally the most desktop-friendly, though it is acceptable to servers.
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Windows CE, Windows XP, Windows 200x Server.
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G*linux with embedded patches, g*linux with desktop patches, g*linux tweaked for servers...
It's only a matter of time before the code bases start deviating more and more.
On embedded systems the user interface is generally customized to the application. That is true regardless of the interface and device: steering wheel, buttons + flashing 12:00, even the interface on an embedded device with a touchscreen running on top of a relatively normal graphics layer is customized to the purpose at hand.
That frees Linux from the constraints of GNOME, KDE, etc. that are very bloated and difficult to use. If you have to write your own complete interface anyway, then the barrier is about the same no matter the underlying native GUI. Where Linux GUI's are unable to compete (usability or speed-wise) with Windows or Macintosh on the desktop, that is little barrier for embedded systems.
Personally, I think that for embedded devices Windows CE is preferable technically, but when you are talking devices with $20-500 price range, the cost of licensing Windows for each device is a major concern. That is probably the biggest factor driving Linux adoption in this market.
I couldn't help but notice there weren't any trools under this topic, so I felt obliged to add one. ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO NATALIE PORTMAN (or something like that) (note to self: insert goatse.cx link here)
It might even be a good article, too, if the font were large enough to read!!
Whyinthehell do webmasters do stupid crap like this?
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Embedded systems have to be able to deal with abrupt loss of power and EXT2's instability there really ruled out Linux as a flexible embedded OS for a long time. Lately with EXT3, JFFS2, and XFS maturing Linux has become much more useful here. Thanks to all the filesystem developers out there!
...you could incrementally magnify the page 10% by simply hitting 0 (zero) as many times as necessary.
I think we're going to see a lot of reuse of existing frameworks and high level abstractions between embedded and traditional applications, and that those frameworks will in turn be hardened to improve their quality. In a lot of situations whole applications will be hardened to run in both variants. This all should in turn benefit the traditional applications. Granted, it still takes a talented developer to produce a quality app no matter how good the underlying framework is. However, I think this type of hardening will help limit the scope of problems to the application code, where the less talented developer is more likely to be able to keep track ot them.
This of course is all dependent on consumers continuing to not tolerate crappy appliances. As long as everyone refuses to consider power cycling as part of normal operating procedure, then I think a lot of improvement is going to occur. However, if this industry explodes, there are going to be a lot of crappy products and consumers are going to lower their expectations, which isn't good for anybody. This is going to be a hot market, but right now I think there's a shortage of engineers who can really work in this domain, and that's probably holding the market back. This is probably good for long term product quality, but bad for someone like me who wants to stop working on defense systems and get into the commercial sector.
Note: This doesn't apply to low powered hardware, hard real time systems, one-of-a-kind systems, etc. Those are a whole different ballgame.
http://www.motorola.com/mediacenter/news/detail/0, 1958,2349_1920_23,00.html
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
A big benefit from using Embedded Linux to run on your target hardware is that you can develop the software on a PC running Linux, get it working in a nice IDE, and then run THE SAME CODE on your hardware.
I did this on a project where we were using QT for the GUI. I had 2 PCs, one running windows and one running Linux. I had a full development environment set up on both, and could use whichever I thought best for my current work.
When we got our first bit of real hardware, it took me 3 weeks to get the actual hardware and Embedded Linux up and running, but my program ran first time.
Anyone who's had to debug stuff only on hardware will know that not having to do this can be a major productivity improvement.
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