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Consumer Electronics Industry: Linux is the Future

Posted by michael on from the ping-the-microwave dept.

securitas writes "The New York Times is carrying a Reuters story about Linux as the software of choice for consumer electronics. At the world's largest consumer electronics show, the IFA trade fair 'the first Linux products are already on show and more will come soon, companies said.' The reason? Linux is freely available, widely embraced and profit margins in the consumer electronics business are one or two percent at best. The math is simple. The industry push comes from the members of the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF), that includes Sony, Philips, Matsushita/Panasonic, Hitachi, Sharp, Samsung, NEC, IBM, LG, Thomson/RCA and Toshiba. The CELF was previously discussed on Slashdot. Mirrors at Silicon.com and CNet News."

12 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. Close! by El · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually, Embedded Linux is the present! I am this very minute putting the finishing touches on embedded Linux code shipping in a projector! Sorry, WindRiver -- guess you aren't the Micro$oft of the embedded world after all!

    --

    "Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney

    1. Re:Close! by El · · Score: 2, Insightful
      The problem with WinCE is that 95% of the embedded products out there don't really need a GUI. Compatibility with Windows GUI code so you can prototype on a PC is the only real advantage of WinCE. With Linux you can also prototype on a PC without all the overhead. (Unless you need a GUI, in which case X is probably has more memory overhead than the WinCE GUI).

      Microsoft's mistake was insisting on "NT everywhere", i.e. that the same OS architecture should work for huge parallel servers and for SOHO routers. Why doesn't Linux have the same problem? I think it's because Linux is a lot more modular; it's easier to strip out much of the kernel at compile time, so it will boot out of and run with much less memory.

      Another mistake Microsoft made was abandoning support for anything other than x86 architecture, making Linux the natural choice for ARM. MIPs, power PC... basically for all the processors that aren't as power-hungry as the x86.

      --

      "Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney

  2. Good news by geekmetal · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Low cost and the freedom to tweak the software are reasons why eight of the world's largest consumer electronics makers, including the numbers one and two Sony Corp and Matsushita of Japan, have set up an alliance to develop and promote Linux for consumer electronics products, last month.

    I just hope all these corporation continue to respect GPL and not find a way to tear Linux apart. Just a little caution needed after what happened to UNIX.

    --
    There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
    1. Re:Good news by garcia · · Score: 3, Insightful

      the big problem (and the reason that the companies are using it) is that they can exploit Linux for their own financial gain without giving us anything back.

      While it's nice to say that Linux runs these devices, I would also like to see that fucking code get into the kernel somehow.

      The reason Linux is as good as it is is because of the community. Linux programmers made the kernel the way it is OPENLY.

      These companies are going to use what has already been developed and then they aren't going to continue adding those features to the kernel to be worked on by others.

      Again, I am glad to see Linux is running these things, but I would prefer that Linux be made better openly by these companies embracing it.

    2. Re:Good news by Abcd1234 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Presuming, of course, that they're making any substantive changes to the kernel code base that anyone is actually interested in. After all, most of the modifications they do make are probably very specific to the hardware they're using, etc, and hence aren't that useful to anyone outside the company.

    3. Re:Good news by Abcd1234 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Perhaps, but do we really care if that code gets into Linux? Do you really want a bunch of patches in the Kernel that allow it run on a specific set of hardware in a particular DVD player?

      My point is that unless these companies are making interesting architectural changes to the kernel, or otherwise improving it in a way that more than just a few people care about, what difference does it make if they release their changes or not?

    4. Re:Good news by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Woah there Cowboy. Their actually helping Linux without ever returning a line of code. The main barriers that are holding back Linux are not technical but social issues. The truth is most people don't care about the license just as long it is not to restrictive. But people have a tendency of following the leader (Or those big companies) when possible. With a lot of the Big boys using Linux it is helping get the word out about Linux and as well in the far future when these imbedded devices start to really standardize Linux has a better chance of being ported to meet the standards then any property format. Once standardization occurs Linux is there to stay in the imbedded market just like Windows is on the Desktop (I Feel imbedded electronics will replace desktops as a common means of computing far faster then it will take linux to win on the desktop). So basically every one who uses Linux is supporting it, even if they are not giving all their code to the public.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    5. Re:Good news by PD · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The reason is that these companies are using Linux for a reason. Don't look at the situation as "us" and "companies". The companies are users too. They choose Linux sometimes for the same reasons that we choose Linux.

      What are those reasons? The ability to get a great product for low cost, the ability to change that product, and the ability to distribute the modified product.

      A company that makes a device, such as a robot, isn't in the operating system business. Even if the extensions that allow Linux to run on robots don't get into the vanilla kernel, it's still a benefit to cause those extensions to be released under the GPL.

      To continue using the robot example, if Sony make a robot running Linux, and releases their patches for the robot Linux kernel, then Samsung could use the robot Linux as the foundation for the Samsung robot. And vice-versa. The reason that these companies win in that situation is that they are not in the business of selling Linux, and Sony and Samsung do not compete on the basis of how bad-ass their Linux product is. They compete in the robot marketplace.

      It makes perfect sense for these two companies to cooperate on the Linux kernel, because they don't compete there. It would not make sense for these two companies to GPL the applications that distinguish their individual robots however. If Sony were to make special modifications to the Linux kernel that implemented trade secret robot algorithms, they would be doing something wrong; those pieces belong in user space, not kernel space.

      --
      If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
  3. Fe Fi Fo Fum I smell the blood of a troller dumb by TheScienceKid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The original reads "Linux, currently a software system mostly used to power big servers and personal computers, is also now emerging as a small set of computing code to drive devices like mobile phones, remote controls and TVs." this Arrrrchive reads "Linux, currently a software system mostly used to power big servers and personal computers, is also now emerging as a small set of computing code to drive devices like mobile phones, remote controls and smart vibrators." and undoubtedly contains more idiocy. Please, don't subscribe to trolls.... vote them down with your modpoints, for gods sake.

  4. Re:Hmm by gyratedotorg · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Why would you load the OS on to a hard drive when you could easly put it on a hardware level and put all the programs on the disk.

    lets face it. no non-trivial piece of software will ever be 100% free of bugs. when a security hole is found in my os, id like to be able to patch it. i dont see how thats possible if the os is at 'the hardware level' (by this, im assuming that you mean it stored in some kind of rom).

    --
    Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
  5. Re:QNX by rusty0101 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Of concern would be the licencing costs associated with QNX. When the manufacturers are talking about 1 and 2% profit margins, even $1 per device (on a $1000 device) is 5% of a 2% profit. Worse for devices in the $50-$200 range.

    Compared with rolling your own distribution of Linux that has only the features you want in the hardware you send out, with a one time charge for the development tools if you choose to use them, and you can see that there is a large potential for savings.

    Quick back of the message calculation. 200,000 units at $500 each is $100 million revenue. Profit of 1% is $1 million. $2 per unit is $400,000, or 40% of what would otherwise be profit. Actual numbers would very based upon the per unit licencing cost of QNX, though I would be surprised if QNX was asking as little as $0.50.

    Just my thoughts, you may have different estimates.

    -Rusty

    --
    You never know...
  6. Re:Interesting by korgull · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That means that they have done developments based on Linux over the past few years but not put it into market yet. Perhaps now they think it's mature enough to do this to replace their existing products.
    I would considder this is to be quite a big step and it's quite remarkable that so many companies share this idea. It takes quite an effort to get so many big companies in line and therefore may be part of some long term strategy.