Slashdot Mirror
Wind River Partners With Red Hat On Embedded Linux
An anonymous reader writes "According to LinuxDevices: 'Calling embedded Linux and VxWorks 'the standards in device software development,' Wind River today announced a dual operating system strategy that adds a newly developed embedded Linux distribution -- Red Hat Embedded Linux -- alongside its proprietary VxWorks real-time operating system.'"
Do you even know what you are talking about?
Wind River and Red Hat are both software companies. The Ergo Audrey was made my 3Com a number of years ago and was very quickly discontinued.
In addition, the OS that the Audrey runs is QNX, which has nothing to do with either Wind River or Red Hat.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
" So RedHat has dropped the desktop..."
I don't think they want to drop the coporate desktop. It seems that is where companies like MS made a lot of money. When Linux catches on there, I assume Redhat wants to be the cheaper alternative with a strong brand name.
Still, I suspect the embedded market is growing with healthly profit margins. Redhat has been interested in this market for a while. I think they bought eCos around 1999. It was already open source (they really bought Cygnus which developed eCos).
Since Wind River's site apparently runs on an embedded platform, you can read about Red Hat and Wind River Partner to Develop Linux Based Solution for Device Software Optimization from Red Hat's site instead.
Here are the things that WR ships when you go to use VxWorks for your embedded system project:
Components Included
Development tools:
TORNADO Integrated Development Environment
GNU and DIAB C/C++ Compilers
WIND VIEW system analyzer
SNiFF+ PRO code visualization tool
Full VxSim
TORNADO BSP DEVELOPER'S KIT
Runtime Components:
VxWorks embedded RTOS
TrueFFS flash file system
VxFusion
VxVMI
VxMP
So, how far does Linux have to come to match these tools?
oes embedded Linux have any advantages whatsoever over say QNX or TRON?Yes, it's a heck of a lot easier to port Open Source applications to, so you don't have to write all your code from scratch. Also, it's oriented towards protected address spaces for each process, unlike vxWorks or pSOS. On the down side, most people consider it to have a larger memory footprint -- but then, memory is cheap and getting cheaper (that's what keeps Microsoft in business!)
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I don't think so. BSDi acquired Walnut Creek, who maintained both Slackware and FreeBSD. BSDi wasn't interested in Slackware and got rid of it. Later, Wind River acquired BSDi.
Journaling Flash File System (JFFS) helps with this
"Most people consider it to have a larger memory footprint"? Um, I've gotten vxWorks down to about 16 KB, IIRC (of course, that was just the task scheduler and semaphores - no drivers, not even serial ports). But I have my doubts that you can get embedded Linux down that low...
And heaven help you if you were foolish enough to base a product on VxWorks AE - they're short-lived product which tried to kludge virtual memory via regions. I imagine most were smart enough to avoid AE (why use a work-around when QNX, Linux, etc, provide the real thing), thus WRS has EOLed it. Presumably VxWorks 6.0 is moving to a real process model; but shouldn't it have been obvious from day 1 that this was the way to go?
The jffs2 filesystem operates directly on
flash. You can use both NAND and NOR flash.
You can't directly use a block device with
jffs2; it's strictly designed for flash.
With jffs2 you get journalling, compression,
wear leveling, and full UNIX-like behavior.
Not that you couldn't use IDE flash on a
rover though; this has built-in wear leveling.
What makes you thing WRS is throwing in the towel on the proprietary nature of VxWorks? They could take some things out of Linux that might help performance or increase capability in some areas of VxWorks. I don't think they want to use the Linux kernal as a whole. Maybe they want to see if the can have TWO OSes to sell or maybe a hybrid. I don't suspect you'll see things coming out to the Open Source from WRS whatever they do with Linux, they are quite proprietary with their software. I once tried to get source for vxWorks (customer wanted it) many years ago. I recall the asking price was 50K plus run-time fees.
If you are a solid embedded engineer who REALLY knows how things work and not just a code slinger you can make vxWorks do some very nice things for you. But you have to be careful or you kill the OS and have to start over. The BSPs are very configurable if you know how the processor actually WORKS. Using VxWorks is not a job for the average programmer, you don't just hack it out and expect it to work. I have taken almost all of the classes they offer (not in the last 5 yrs thought) and found them to be well taught and service we had at a major defense company was excelllent. I could call up the local tech guy and get good answers. Of course YMMV on tech support as we are talking people here. I don't recall seeing Linux with drivers for VME bus and MIL-STD-1553 as VxWorks has. But maybe if Linux hits the embedded market someone will do that. I've not heard of anyone with a sour impression of VxWorks. Plus they HAVE managed to stay in business, if they were as bad as you imply I think as small as the market for embedded OSes is over the last 15yrs (it's getting bigger now) they would have gone under.
As for Tornado and the Debugger, I've seen much better IDEs. The tools were often much buggier than the BSPs and the OS. Unless they have improved since the last time I used them I think they were more in the way than helpful.WRS is pretty much the leader in embedded general purpose OSes. There are others that are better for specific purposes.
Oh, and this stuff about vendors tieing you to a platform..ever seen Windows run on anything but a X86 Architecture? If it works for Redmond you can bet everyone is going to try to emulate it in their market. Software vendors are a Monkey See Monkey do bunch with Microsoft as the head monkey.
Back to lurk mode...
I've seen source code to both vxWorks and pSOS operating systems from Windriver. They both contain an enormous amount of BSD code. It's cobbled together poorly and sometimes very basic functionality doesn't even work right. However, after spending a few years with pSOS, vxWorks is certainly a breath of fresh air. Still, they should realize that developing embedded software is not point-and-click stuff. Get rid of Tornado!!! And although you can purchase a license to see the source code for their OS, it's cost prohibitive for a lot of companies, and development is stunted until you have it.