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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."
This is a tried and true method in the scientific community: if you disagree with the conclusions of a study, you can always call the methodology "flawed". That way, you never have to pay attention to results that are different from what you believe.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
...but needs PUBLICIZING. As in, to non-geeks. Specifically, pointy-haired bosses.
Wanna bet the pro-MS article will be the one most PHBs will have come across their desk?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
The rebuttal shows the study to be full of flaws in both design and execution.
/. for fair reviews of items provided by stores they have no relation to.. now where can I order a Zero Blaster again? :D
;)
I'm not being funny here, but since when did anyone ever pay attention to Microsoft backed or funded tests such as this? They'd hardly be backing this comparative benchmarks and reviews only for their product to get slated. Every time I read a 'Windows 2003 Server is 2.3x cheaper than Linux!' type story (where they end up comparing to something like Solaris which.. duh.. isn't Linux!) it just bugs the heck out of me.
I'd much rather cast my attention to impartial, un-biased sites such as
And yes, I am just joking around before I get flamed to hell and back
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
after seeing ozzy trying out the iDrive on his BMW, I would guess it may not be more usable or more reliable
My Dad works with voice mail systems, if its loaded with winnt it can take up to 30 minutes to boot. With linux it takes maybee 5. One of the problems with windows is the inability to strip out stuff you don't need.
Windows XP = money Linux = free to download
I don't see where the money argument comes into play here? Before someone says something about TCO let me point out a humorous but true text on how Microsoft actually kills (link is a google cache).
The report includes data from a survey of 100 manufacturers using 32-bit processors in a range of embedded projects and applications -- 50 using various implementations of embedded Linux, and 50 using Microsoft's Windows Embedded platforms(Windows CE .NET and Windows XP Embedded).
Rubbish rubbish and more rubbish. They shouldn't have been so biased with the study. Which manufacturers were used? Give it a rest now MS. It's obvious for one if MS funded the study, it's bound to be swayed, however if they didn't fund the study, depending on the vendors, it's still bound to be swayed. 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?
I'm sure someone else is going to post a very good thorough post but we all know this is nothing more than utter bs.
MoFscker
First, let me be honest. I just skimmed the LinuxDevices article and didn't read the Microsoft article.
One thing I've noticed among PHBs is an ever-broadening definition of "embedded systems". I've seen more than one project go down the road of using a cPCI system running Windows NT 3.51 (yes these are current systems running this old version) on a harddrive. These systems are calling themselves "embedded".
This has been especially in systems that had serious size, weight, and power needs. Had I designed the system, I guess I would've used something like QNX or Linux on a much smaller processor, compact flash card, etc.
I guess my point is that these days it seems like general-purpose computers are being called "embedded" when I see embedded as much, much smaller (e.g. no moving parts, a microcontroller, etc...).
I dunno, I'm rambling...
On a consumer level, there are no real benefits to using Windows on embedded controllers, or even developing for evaluation boards.
Although I deviate from Linux in this example, it is still relevant to all open source embedded solutions. A few questions: is there an implementation of Remote Terminal Services for embedded versions of Windows, for easy manipulation of the embedded device in question? If so, what sort of licensing costs are implied?
As demonstrated numerous times before, open standards such as VNC are superior in the aspects of platform-ubiquity, openness, freeness, and simplicity. A shining example of what would be a costly, if implemented, solution, under Windows would be the Ethernet board running Contiki.
Oh yeah, and how many simultaneous threads, per-process-threads, and processes, do embedded Windows products support?
One must also compare the existing products that can be compiled between embedded Linux and Windows. I'm willing to bet software written with POSIX in mind beats Windows.
Excuse me if these speculations seem a bit armchair.
-
And the Angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots! The cries of the carrots!"
I hadn't seen the original report, but as soon as I saw it was funded by MS, I assumed it was marketting fluff and moved on. Now I see that the "rebuttal" is on LinuxDevices.com, and was meant to specifically prove the MS report wrong and that Linux is better. That means it's more marketting fluff so we can move on.
When will people relaize that MS is not the only people putting out biased reports. I put the same faith in a "Linux is great" report by a Linux group as I do in a "Windows is great" report by MS.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Linux-biased study finds that Microsoft-biased study was full of shit. Anti-Microsoft-Biased readers of Slashdot agree. Film at eleven.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I didn't catch the original, and I don't know where it was publicized or anything, but I imagine it was in places that make it look legit. More importantly, it was in places that people who don't already use Linux might be likely to look. Rebuttals like this are nearly useless unless they are prominently placed in some widely read medium--and by "widely read" I mean someplace that at least an average techie, even if entirely M$-biased, would be likely to at least see the headline. I admit that I have no knowledge at all of the world of journalism, online or otherwise, but I think that people who write studies/rebuttals/articles/etc like this, showing up Microsoft and their precious status quo, should make significant efforts to get them in mainstream media.
Unless someone already likes Linux, they're not likely to frequent LinuxDevices.com. Someone who already likes Linux is not the target audience for such journalism, or shouldn't be. We need to target it at the others, the people who don't like Linux, because it's articles like this that might make them like it, and it's studies like the one it's rebutting that make them not like it.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
It's very much a no brainer trying to decide whether to use windows or linux in development. When your'e done do you want it to be your product or microsofts. How much of a partner do you want to be with microsoft ?
The rest is neither here nor there. It winds up being religous warfare over which tool, what paradigm or was the salesgirl cute.
With linux you can own your work, with Microsoft your work can own you.
Microsoft says Windows better than Linux! Linux advocates disagree!
In other news, a communist revolution has shaken Russia, and Napoleon suffered a shocking defeat at Waterloo.
Cheers
-b
Something like this is too obvious to take any space on slashdot. We all know Microsoft wants to defame Linux with any 'report' they try to pull.
The reason why its not worthy of mention is because theres a whole slew of embedded manufacturers using Linux or trying to use Linux and not Windows CE. We know how many arches CE runs on and how reliably. We've seen the evaluation packs of ARM7TDMI and ARM720T based chips that allow the running of Linux and companies like QT bringing packages for development on Linux.
In this regard alone, Linux is the monopolist and Microsoft the underdog. If they get a little reactive it surprises noone and neither do them lying. Most of the comments for this post will be of the sarcastic 'no kidding!' kind.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
First, I'd like to point out that I've not read the articles, so I could be completely wrong... but:
I highly suspect that the Microsoft report ends up biasing towards Windows development in a variety of ways. This is just standard marketing practice. When you have someone with an interest in one particlar result directing a study, the study will, of course, be biased.
By the same token, I suspect that the study on linuxdevices.com is similarly biased.
The sad reality is that managers and suchlike are most likely to see (and believe) the Microsoft report, or more likely a tagline from it. The naive techies are most likely to see (and believe) the pro-linux report. The cynical techies among us probably secretly wish that the pro-linux one was true, but really know that the only studies worth considering are independant ones without any hidden goal.
This is a tried and true method in the business community: If you can't get a fair study to show the conclusions you want, hold an unfair study. More people will pay attention to the results than the retraction.
Aww, you're no fun anymore.
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At our company we use GNU/hurd on our embedded operating system. Everybody laughs about how gnu/hurd sucks but its perfect for embedded stuff. We produce Small kde-based web terminals for cyber cafe. On a Yontrix 386 compatible processor with 2 Mb of ram, it boots off a 1.44M flash rom. The KDE is a stripped down version of kde 1.4 with just Konqueror, kedit, and kicker installed. No Xfree86, a EGA frame buffer is used. If you thought KDE was bloated, just see our web termials . Since hurd is completly free and easy to code for, it took us only two hours of programming time to make this system compared to 3 weeks for a linux soloution..
Writing a rebuttal is nice, but like retractions in newspapers, they are not all that effective in undoing the impression created by the original report. Aren't there any studies out there showing Linux is cheaper? Relying on "Linux is free" is no longer sufficient.
"Facts Schmacks, you can use facts to prove anything!"
The study goes on to prove that the concept of "friendly competition", which surprisingly many other companies follow, benefits end users the most.
I read the original report. I read the rebuttal.
While I don't doubt that the original is biased towards Windows artificially, the rebuttal did nothing to dissuade me. The arguments forward were nearly always of the "I have experience that differs from the report, therefore the report must be invalid " type.
Please, if you want to refute a claim, do so based on facts that can be proven (especially if the original is based on what might well be quasi-facts or spin). Simply saying the original conclusions were invalid doesn't make it so, even if they actually were.
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
On a more serious note, I have worked for O2 the netherlands. In that role I had to develop a site for the XDA a pda/phone developed by MS. Slight problem, I didn't have one available. A few weeks away from launch the bloody thing was nowhere to be found. I had had glimpses at it but building the site was pretty much guessing how it would work with the pda.
The crap thing turned out only to support an ancient version of IE, no CSS for one. This of course was a bit of a bummer. It also crashed repeatdly, well no suprise there, even so terminally it had to be send back to the supplier for repair.
I also had the delight to work with the zaurus for a short while, after the XDA it was like having the difference between being kicked in the nuts and a blowjob.
We have come to expect our pc's to crash. It seems to be just a thing they do. But how often has youre tv crashed after years of working non-stop? Youre cd-player? Youre washing machine? I am currently testing 2003 of windows, it has crashed repeatdly on a intel rig. MS just can't write crash proof software. It is the price we pay for the wide choice of hardware and uses we get on a pc. On my phone, thank you but no thanks.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Okay, a lot of pro-Linux studies have their own problems (frankly, I don't put much stock in "studies" any more, especially vendor-funded ones).
However, the numbers this one used are *ridiculous*. Total Cost of Development?
Okay, let's see. Of the parties surveyed, cancelled Linux projects cost more than CE projects. This Jerry guy (he's got a PhD, so he must just be dishonest, not stupid) then uses this as a basis to claim that Linux is more expensive than CE. He's got to be kidding me.
By the same metric, all C++ software should be replaced by bash equivalents. Why? Because the average cost of a bash-based project is much, much smaller than the average cost of a C++ project. Of course, there's the little additional detail that the sort of projects one uses bash on are much, much smaller and simpler. That is, of course, the factor that makes the huge difference. However, you can conveniently ignore that tidbit.
Somebody tried to do the same study with Windows and some Sun servers back in the day to show that Windows made a far cheaper server. Well...yes, but most of the servers being used to average out Windows cost in the study were small, departmental servers that nobody was spending much on. The Sun servers were the far more powerful and capable systems for things like eBay's back end that had technicians swarming all over 'em. Sure enough, the Windows boxes had a lower average maintenance cost.
Average total cost is *totally useless* without some additional constraints so that you're measuring average cost of *similar projects*. If you took all PVRs with roughly equivalent feature sets and examined cost based on embedded OS, *then* you might have a useful study. The current one is totally useless other than for FUD use.
May we never see th
One reason nowadays that most embedded developers host their development on Windows is that most embedded tools publishers only make their tools available to run on Windows. Often these tools, like compilers for arcane chips, are quite specialized, so the developer is left with no choice.
That said, I think whoever wrote the report is on crack if they think Windows is a better development environment than Linux. I have been doing embedded for a year now, and one of the main things I still dislike about it is that I have to do most of my development on Windows.
It is quite common for each compiler vendor to write their own integrated development environment, with an editor and integrated build system. But the market for these products are not as great as the market for IDEs for the development of desktop or server software, which means they can't invest in developing a more refined GUI for their IDEs, so their basic usability and quality is quite poor.
If you think Visual Studio is a lousy environment for development, you should try the ARM IDE or TI's Code Composer Studio. Using them is like pounding nails with your fists.
However, the situation is slowly starting to look up. GCC targets many embedded CPUs and is starting to become widely used for embedded development. The other GNU tools also form a more or less complete set of what you would need to develop embedded products, with GDB acting as both a debugger and simulator, LD able to function as an embedded linker, being able to do two-machine debugging with GDB and so on. Also there's GNU make, CVS and so on.
The result is that while I had to use the proprietary (and expensive) ARM compiler to develop for the Oxford Semiconductor ARM7TDMI-based 911 FireWire/IDE bridge chip (which allows you to hook up inexpensive IDE disk drives as firewire storage), they switched over to building their firmware with GCC for the 922 USB/FireWire/IDE 922 bridge chip.
I've been using GCC under Cygwin for my 922 development, but a CD with a new SDK on it is expected to arrive in the mail any day now. When it does, I will have a choice of Cygwin, Linux or Mac OS X development environments, all running the same version of GCC. And I'm very happy about that.
Most likely, though, I will use Mac OS X for my 922 development. I'd prefer using Linux to Windows, but if I can use Mac OS X, I'd prefer that to Linux, if for no other reason than the fact that the clipboard works correctly, as well as that I could use CodeWarrior to edit my source.
Maybe if I get real ambitious, I might write a CodeWarrior plugin so I can use the CodeWarrior IDE to compile my code with arm-elf-gcc.
(And don't give me crap about not using Emacs. I was an expert at Emacs when most of you were still in diapers. I still have my .emacs file which I first created in 1987. But I vastly prefer CodeWarrior's GUI text editor unless I have some reason to run a bunch of Emacs lisp code on my source file.)
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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.
At my previous job, we were involved in several case studies that were paid for by Microsoft. They were called REJ reports (Rapid Economic Justification). Anyone who takes such reports at face value is a moron. Would anyone really expect Microsoft to fund a study that says their technology is inferior? I don't believe such reports really fool anyone. In my experience, they are primarily used by people who have already made up their minds, but need some technical "justification" for the executives.
But in this regard, I can't really blame Microsoft. Every big technical company has "white papers" and such on their web site that tell why their stuff is so much better than everyone elses. It's marketing material. So what? Everyone does it. It's just that Microsoft is damn good at it.
The linux community should not complain about how good Microsoft is at marketing, and just get better themselves!
Check here for a more thorough "factual" rebuttal, including my favorite quote from the original report...
No reasoning, no nothing, as to why Windows XP Embedded (which a lot of the reasoning of the rest of the report was based on). Why, might one ask, would someone do this? Might it have something to do with the fact that the royalty cost for Linux is $0, the royalty cost for Windows CE (in volume) is $2.60, and the royalty cost for Windows XP Embedded is approximately $100 per system?
Yah. OK. That's a bit like me saying I'm going to compare the reliability of Toyotas and Fords, but for the purpose of the study, only Toyota cars that don't actually run will be used.
I mean, really - the original report is so bad it's laughable. It really didn't even NEED a rebuttal.
Also be aware that these things are not even close to being "low power", if you are looking to operate under battery power I'd look elsewhere.
Actually, I think it'd be damn cool if HTML had a sarcasm tag. It has an emphasis tag already, and sarcasm has traditionally been more difficult to get across in the printed word than verbally (since one relies on intonation).
May we never see th
The following is OFF TOPIC Please disregard.
.sigs - however...
Want a new constitution?
Ok, so as a rule I don't repsond to
This web site kinda scares me. I took several minutes to browse the site and several more to read the text of the pdf file. Spelling errors aside, some of the comments really make me wonder for example:
SALOON OPERATOR replacement of defective BEER PUMP that fosters alcoholism, mate-battering, drunk driving, and other crimes: Deductible
FAMILY replacement of defective STOVE to feed family: NOT deductible
Never mind that the beer pump replacement is a legit business expense, that the bar keep employees people, probably does a fair ammount of good in the community just by being there and needs to turn a profit to stay in business. The point this statement makes to me, isn't that we need reform of tax laws, but that anyone who ownes a business is EVIL. Especially any business that might cater to a audience that doesn't fit into what the author of this crap thinks is right. Thankfully, the author's rights to spew forth such waste *IS* protected and defended by myself and countless others.
So, no. I don't want a new constitution. I've read mine and it seems to be just fine. I've sworn to defend it more than once, and I have defended it, against all enemies, both forign and domestic and I shall continue to do so.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
Among other criticisms, I thought the rebuttal had an excellent point that the original study counted "no support" as a strike against Linux and then averaged the cost of commercial embedded Linux distributions in the section on cost. Most embedded Linux toolkits that cost money come with support.
When both groups clearly have a strong agenda, I choose to believe neither. Wake me when a non-partisan third party chimes in.
I don't care what study you refer to, or what product it covers, somebody who disagrees will find lots of problems in the design and execution of that study.
could be AWESOME if it could also be applied to the desktop.
You know what I mean... UGH have you seen your %SYSTEM% directory lately?
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
need not be multitasking. That rules out a lot of the above.
...which is probably a more useful definition when considering the end purpose.
Otherwise, embedded to marketing types just means "end-user doesn't administer, except for maybe a complete re-flash".
But I understand a purely embedded OS is the kind that is purely reactionary, and just ties hardware together with minimal logic (hence the non-multitasking aspect, robust interrupt handling aside)
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
More fodder for your anonymous cannon:
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html
Enjoy!
/ \
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign for peace
x
/ \
Considerable space is expended on qualitative discussions of Linux vs. Windows and open source vs. proprietary software. Nothing new is presented here, and this article will say no more about this material, except when it contradicts other more substantive material.
I hate to say this, but that is probably the real point of the study. They are fishing for any sucker who still thinks Microsoft is a great free market force, and not the result of government granted monopolies. Who doesn't understand that true free market societies are about taking advantage of things like the Internet. Where unlimited and uninhibited copying is a major competitive advantage if you work with Linux, but a major threat if you call "intellectual property" your crown jewels (like Microsoft does). Too bad they don't feel the same way about their customers...
Although I skimmed the article it should be noted that they try to view cost of development as an issue as well as speed. If one hires the right staff, one can still design the right code on Linux in about the same time frame...
I used to work for a startup and our main concern with using Linux was its "freedom" and its cost in the final product. MS always forgets that when people are designing sub $100 hardware for set-top terminals and such they want full capabilities in the hardware but they can't be paying a $15 license for each box. In this role, x86 processors are also too expensive. We had a LuxSonor based design and went with a proprietary OS vendor at the time, but we were already considering PowerPC and Linux for future products.
Yes remote terminal services is available for eXP ( I use it everyday :) - even when no actual video hardware is installed.
Also - the practical limit on threads that are actually running is around 300 depending on how you have the scheduler configured ( you have a couple choices, like whether to priority boost foreground process's etc. ) The reason 300 is the limit is because 300x the time slice is ~ the thread starvation threshold - which will trigger a series of threads being boosted to 15 with double quanta - which will never end. BTW - the thread stavation threshold is not adjustable.
Check out the new Linux PC I have for sale.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
...then I could have finished my last embedded project within 2 days ;)
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Looks a bit big for being used in an embedded environment..also the specs are a little overkill for that purpose. I'd go look for a much smaller and much cheaper MIPS32-based Au1100 or Au1500 (for multimedia) based board. You won't get as much flash or fancy busses, but it's fast, low power and cheap.
You will need to get a toolchain working for those, which is a little harder than for x86 but not impossible hehe...
Another very recommendable product is the XScale platform. If you want to try that, I recommend manufacturers like Karo Electronics.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
I don't know whether to laugh or sigh.
I think you've missed the point somewhat.
It's not a case of being anti-business per se, more of recognizing that some businesses are getting tax breaks for things which do more harm than good, and tax breaks being given to businesses where they should not. The businesses represented there being a selection of examples, I believe.
For example:
The bar. I agree completely. Just because alcohol is the government approved drug doesn't mean it isn't a drug, so the barkeeper is in reality a legitimatized drug dealer! How many people killed by drunk drivers? More than all other violent crime put together, and that's just one aspect of the sale of alcohol.
I'm not advocating the banning of alcohol, I don't believe in banning things, but the example is the government subsidizing a drug dealer when it could be helping people who need help.
Custom Rules For SpamAssassin
Even if Microsoft's study was the greatest contribution to scientific knowledge since Einstein, I would still choose Linux over "embedded" Windows. If considering several embeddable systems, Windows would be at the end of the pack.
The reason is simple: Microsoft has a proven track record for security and reliability--a bad one. Also, they are a greedy, closed, and sinister company. Even further, if I want to ensure an embedded system is useful over the long-term, why would I choose a proprietary system, anyway? Companies come and go like the wind (even Microsoft), but it is much harder to unseat a particular version of Linux.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Sorry to nitpick, but use of language is very important to people's perception.
When I read the first link in the synopsis I could have sworn it said "Microsoft-fudded report" instead of "Microsoft-funded report". ;)
If you actually read the rebuttal, you would see that though it does have a biased author, the rebuttal actually makes sense-- the flaws it points out in the original report clearly do exist. It doesn't matter whether the rebuttal's author is biased if the resulting rebuttal is factual.
Life's a lot like money-- you spend it, then it's gone. Spend wisely.
And in 1976, I wrote my first program in FORTRAN on a coding form, then typed it into a teletype terminal on an IBM 360 mainframe at the University of Idaho where my father was a E.E. grad student. I was twelve then.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
The study should have included, among other options, embedded NetBSD. (And, no, I have no business association with Wasabi Systems; I just admire what they do.)
From what they wanted to charge us... keep in mind this is two year old information.
And yes I know that CE runs on more than x86, but keep in mind the most mature boxes (and we were looking to license and produce someone else's design at the time) were x86 based. Either which way the numbers didn't work out... and I am not the average slashdotter.
Don't complain to me. E-mail the constitution's author and tell him how you think it could be improved. I am not in any way affiliated with the web site's owner.
OH NOES!!! IT APPEARS YUO DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY FOR DIS HERE PIZZA! WAHT EVER ARE YOU GOING TO DO!?!?