Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Wind River Announces It Likes Linux After All

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the love-isn't-always-on-time dept.

onecrazyfoo writes "Wind River is going to start supporting Linux in the embedded market. Pretty big news from the largest company in the embedded tools market. What makes it even more interesting is the fact that they have been very anti-Linux and outspoken about it in the past. You can read more about their announcement at LinuxDevices.com." I'm guessing this has come about because of recent changes in the company.

7 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. For those who don't RTFA.... by wo1verin3 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Found a link off the main article showcasing products embedded with Linux and actually shipping.

  2. First, Embrace Linux, then... by mark_space2001 · · Score: 2, Informative
    ...then Extend and Extinguish, right?

    I don't think of course that they could truly extinguish Linux, but I'm sure they could make some proprietory tools or what not that would make it harder on the competition. I'd in fact expect that this is a pre-emptive strike on their competition, which has probably been gaining on their Tornado tools and WindRiver OS. I even won't put it past them to try to put a few competitors out of business, then start pushing existing embedded Linux users over to their proprietary OS.

  3. Re:What are good Embedded Linux Systems? by PeteABastard · · Score: 2, Informative

    We use uClinux which is aimed at micros without MMUs. The distro includes a couple of glibc replacements, which are optimised for size. It seems to be quite popular, and meet a range of needs. It has an active developer community and some of the kernel changes for the no MMU systems are being fed into the 2.5 kernel so will have even wider support in the future.

    Peter

  4. Re:better developer tools by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    A lot of people say things like this, and I don't understand.

    I've used a $5,000-per-seat tool suite for embedded PowerPC development on a Windows host, and it sucked. When I got permission from my management to move over to Linux-hosted development with gcc and gdb, it felt like being let out of prison! I've got my gcc/gdb/gvim/ctags on a screaming fast Slackware box with a BDM interface to the target, and I couldn't be happier.

    Obviously most people prefer a nice cuddly IDE, but damned if I can figure out *why*.

  5. Not surprised by gnalre · · Score: 3, Informative

    Considering the prices for a vxworks seat I am not surprised. I am sure embedded linux at the low end has been killing them for a couple of years now.
    They also changed there strategy and there "crown jewels". The vxworks source code suddenly became cheaper.

    However there is a lot more to embedded development than just buying a package and putting it on. The things vxworks does do well is it provide a very configurable hardware layer which makes moving to new hardware relatively easy. Also some of there visulation tools such as windview are very good(Oh I wish there was something similar for windows) which allows you to sort out bottle necks.

    However you do pay through the nose for this (and there new licensing model has made it very expensive) and for cheap targets it is just not economic.

    --
    Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
  6. Re:Well well well... by RoLi · · Score: 2, Informative
    Not necessarily. There are a lot of people out there who feel that there are highly overlooked weaknesses of Linux. Now, I don't hate Linux. I don't 'not see the potential' in Linux. But I do think that it's overrated in many ways. I also don't think that Microsoft will sit still and let Linux be better than them as a desktop OS. There's no reason why others wouldn't see it that way.

    So essentially you follow Microserf's discussion rule #1: Reduce all computing to desktops.

    So you want to ignore embedded systems in a embedded systems thread and talk about desktops because that's the only market Microsoft still looks good.

    Fine.

    Microsoft became big because the hardware was cheaper and Windows was good enough. Wherever Linux is "good enough" (read: whereever the needed applications are available) Linux wipes the floor with Windows.

    Just look at the 3d-movie market. That's a desktop/workstation market and it's dominated by Linux.

  7. Re:Well well well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    Weta Digital? Linux.
    Pixar? Linux.
    Disney? Just got Adobe tools running on Linux.
    Digital Domain (rendered Titanic)? SGI and NT on the desktop. Linux did the rest. They had this to say:
    Windows NT had several shortfalls. First, our standard applications, which normally run on SGI hardware, were not available under NT. Our software staff could port the tools, but that solution would be quite expensive. NT also had several other limitations; it didn't support an automounter, NFS or symbolic links, all of which are critical to our distributed storage architecture. There were third-party applications available to fill some of these holes, but they added to the cost and, in many cases, did not perform well in handling our general computing needs.
    That was 5 years ago. I wonder what they're running on their desktops today?

    Who else is there?