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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."
...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
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
> by-enlarge
:-)
You've been reading too many spams. The correct expression is "by and large".
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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...
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"
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.
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.
One of the problems with windows is the inability to strip out stuff you don't need.
I don't know what Windows version you're talking about here, but it most certainly is NOT recent Windows XP Embedded (as in Embedded XP SP1 - I assume you're sufficiently on-topic to be talking about embedded Windows stuff). You can mix and match your own XP configuration, and have it contain just the pieces you need.
:-), but that's besides the point. The point is that it's SOOOO easy to select/unselect options.
Don't need no steeenkin' GUI? Unselect it.
Don't need no steeenkin' webserver? Unselect it.
Don't need no steeenkin' Ethernet support? Unselect it.
The list could go on for miles - it really works quite well. There's a target designer tool where just about anything is optional, and the database for that tool is HUGE. Module inter-dependencies are handled automatically, and the size of the target image easily available. You could argue that MS would need that tool, since no-one can figure out how their dependencies work anyway (and I'd agree with you
And no, I'm not affiliated with MS in any way - I've just actually USED Embedded XP, and that brings a somewhat different view on things.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Nice troll, but it doesn't fly. There are in fact objective criteria for evalating experimental and statistical methodology, even though both coal companies and the "alternative medicine" crowd wish it weren't so.
Because they have the money to fund the studies. Now, whether or not that implies the studies are biased I can't say because I don't know the authors of these studies.
BTW, if Microsoft funded a study that concluded that Windows wasn't superior for a certain task do you think they would allow it to be published? I think not. Because of that all Microsoft funded studies (that we read) will always conclude Windows is the best.
What's the name of that new Linux guy at M$? This is the kind of stuff he needs to address. Microsoft can NOT now afford to be spewing out "whitpapers" that can go right to the shreader.
Look, there is no "brain drain" at Microsoft, they DO have some smart people working for them. So why do they produce frilly lady fluff like this? If Microsoft wants to survive, they will need to work ALONG SIDE linux, have a reallistic approach to compeating with Linux, not just shitting out paper after paper that even marginal techies like me laugh at.
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.)
Request your free CD of my piano music.
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.
As clearly point out in the rebuttal, this was a statistical study and as such must follow precise rules to considered valid. First, any sample must be random. The study was not random but self-selective as the names were drawn from a web site registry. Second, the poll question must be made public to insure that they were not leading. Without these two criteria met, we must assume that survey is flawed.
The problems mount when one reads that the data analysis methodology is not given. We can in fact live without know the specific data, but without the methods we must assume that the analyst crunched the data until they discovered the answer they wanted. This is a classic method of lying with statistics.
The nail in the coffin, even if we assume the analysts are honest in all other respects, is that we do not know how the result were normalized. All we know is that for the projects developed by the Linux people cost four times as much as the projects developed by the windows developers. Were the Linux projects 4 times as hard? Did the Linux projects return four times the revenue? Were the Linux projects more costly research based projects while the Windows projects merely applications of work already completed? Were the differences in the way the various companies costed the projects.
All the other stuff is just in the rebuttal is just a rational of why Linux development is probably just as good as Windows development. The fact is that the study has all the classic signs of a mercenary statistician massaging data to generate a predetermined answer. People wonder why kids are so stupid now. It is because companies like MS want to keep them stupid so they will believe these bogus studies.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black