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Embedded Systems Study Rebutted
Gabba writes "LinuxDevices.com has a rebuttal to the Microsoft-funded report purporting to show Windows nearly 4X more efficient than Linux for developing embedded systems. The rebuttal shows the study to be full of flaws in both design and execution."
Embedded devices by Zynot, the official Gentoo fork(tm)!
Not to support Microsoft or anything, but your Dad isn't using "embedded" Windows. This is like complaining that RedHat 9 takes too long to boot on your i486 embedded CPU.
Both Windows CE and XP Embedded are designed to let you remove whatever components you want. You can strip out the GUI, networking, swap files, etc. Windows CE can definitially be customized to boot in just a few seconds.
On the other hand, as an embedded developer I must say that Windows CE is the WORST OS by far I have ever had to work with. It's so bad my company discarded 3 months of work on drivers and a BSP (Board Support Package) for our hardware because neither we nor any of our customers could figure out how to use it reliably. It's an absolute nightmare.
Linux is very nice for embedded systems and I'd guess 40% of our customers are using it with our hardware, losing out to DOS believe it or not. The only OS I think is better for embedding is QNX. If you can afford it, QNX absolutely rocks.
Remember MS violated antitrust forcing companies to go MS or go to bankruptcy court. How is one supposed to believe any studies they'd do?
Generalized statements like this are stupid and don't mean much. Remember IBM sold equipment to the Nazis so they could round up and gas-chamberize Jews more efficiently. Don't trust anything IBM says. Err...
How can you trust any study not to be biased when it is being funded by the company who will profit the must from the study?
I guess if your definition of "embedded system" was a rack server set-up and your programmers were already Microsofted then you might make better progress with WinXP embedded.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Off topic, but for those who care, the QNX OS and desktop are available as a free download at www.qnx.com. Install and configuration is trivial for anyone who can install RedHat or 2K. Interesting OS and enough free software out there to make it worth toying with on a junk computer when there's nothing on the tube.
I know software crashes occasionally, no matter who wrote it, but man, you ought to get your power checked or something, I mean holy shit man, My TV crash? NEVER! All three of my cell phones? NEVER! I don't have a DVD player, but my cable box? NEVER! My router? NEVER! I do turn it off when i leave for overnight or longer trips. WAP? I don't have one, but my cordless phone (landline?) NEVER! I don't have a Satellite Receiver either, but my microwave? NEVER! My automatic sprinkler system controller? NEVER! My coffee pot? NEVER! My VCR? NEVER! I could go on, but what's the point?
Yeah, he should check out his hardware/driver setup on his 2003 box, but you also need to remember 2003 has just been released, and is, for all intents and purposes,still BETA. Until it's been run in the field for a year or so, and the bug reports have been submitted back to Microsoft and fixed, it is BETA. Just try getting Exchange Server up and running properly, and with all the functionality of it running on 2000 server. It's a bitch, and even Microsoft admits that.
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
Ya know, comparing QNX to HURD is *far* too nice to the HURD.
Yes, they're both microkernels -- but one is small and fast, and one is huge and slow. If you want a small and fast and well-designed microkernel OS (who some embedded systems development types I know have been putting some serious time into), try taking a look at VSTa.
FWIW, I used to work at MontaVista. I'm still kind of fond of the product we made. For smaller projects I'd be thinking *reeeal* hard about using VSTa instead (yes, I'd prolly have to write a fair bit of the hardware support myself -- but it'd still have a dramatically lower footprint and, on account of being in userspace, those drivers would actually be easy to debug), but for bigger projects (say, anything involving a serious GUI subsystem) I'd prolly try to get my employer to shell out for a copy of MV{L,G} or QNX or somesuch.