Consumer Electronics Industry: Linux is the Future

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."

Comments

Hmm

[ciroknight]

Won't all computers end up being embedded devices? I mean really think about it. 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. Makes a lot of sense because you save so much disk space, and at the same time, the OS is more secured against accidental deletion and file corrupting viruses.

So I treat this as the ultimate victory for Linux. The next generation of computers is wireless and mobile and trying to keep everything secure. Firmware Operating Systems is the solution; hail the next coming of a great era, the wireless/linux revolution!

QNX

[levik]

I always somehow thought that QNX was the OS of choice, since it was smaller and more stable.

I mean sure devices like Tivo which can download patches from the server once a week may not really care, but what about something that's stuck with whatever OS it leaves the factory with...

Is linux really "there" yet?

Re:FreeBSD Embedded

[IM6100]

FreeBSD isn't as portable as NetBSD, nor is the kind of advantage in hardware support for desktop OSes needed in an embedded device application.

Plus, you're not as likely to hear about products that embed one of the BSD OSes, as there's no reason for the company to disclose they're using a BSD.

There's lots of embedded NetBSD out there.

Another Linux market...

[hahn]

I'm a physician at a large academic hospital. The healthcare area is one that I think Linux is ideally suited for. Few have attempted it and yet, if you look at the potential benefits, it's almost a no-brainer:

- A large hospital will have hundreds if not thousands of computer terminals. Linux could significantly reduce hospital overhead costs, which nowadays is being given a high priority.

- Linux doesn't currently have the virus/worm problem that Windows has. This is majorly problematic for Windows in the healthcare industry where almost any informatics downtime is unacceptable. Healthcare informatics is rapidly turning into a mission-critical enterprise as more and more hospitals depend on their computer systems to deliver information.

- There's no reason healthcare workers couldn't use the StarOffice/OpenOffice Suites for applications. Most users' needs are pretty basic and documents regarding patients are supposed to be held strictly confidential as well.

- Which brings me to the one downside. Few medical informatics applications are written for Linux. Those that have been are open-source and are developed very slowly since very few programmers out there know anything about (or care to know anything about) healthcare informatics application requirements.