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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.'"
What happened to BSD? It wasn't that long ago that Wind River announced that BSD was the wave of the future.
I suspect that Linux's file system is a bit more robust than what they used on the rovers.
Apart from ease of porting preexisting applications, does embedded Linux have any advantages whatsoever over say QNX or TRON?
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.
Redhat hasn't dropped the desktop. If anything, it's stronger on the desktop now that it's called Fedora because it's managed by the community. The sky's the limit man. :)
Life is offtopic.
Do you even know what you're 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.
No, that's why I asked a question. I thought that perhaps the Audrey hardware runs some kind of software.
Linux: Free if your time is worthless.
My boss likes to say things about "The Standards". In her worldview, anything is the best choice for any given situation if it's "The Industry Standard". That phrase is practically sacred to her. The only reason we're not running Windows (her favourite OS) on our servers is because in her perception, "The Industry Standard" for large Web sites is Solaris on SPARC hardware. But the instant her businessperson friends start saying how wonderful Win2K3 on Compaq servers is, she'll probably be listing our Sun Enterprise servers on eBay...
After so many years in the tech field, I'm starting to get really really wary of people who say such glowing things about "The Standards". It seems to be a thinly-veiled way of saying "What Everybody Else Is Doing". In the 1800s, "The Standard" way of life for a wealthy white Southerner in the US would include the ownership of slaves. And "The Standard" in industrialised Western nations was, of course, for women (and blacks) to not have the right to vote.
The point of my little screed is-- if the best defence a company has for their products/services/actions/lack of actions is that they are "the standard"... well, it either shows a severe lack of imagination, or an adherence to "this is today's fad; tomorrow, the fad may be different" mentality. The same sort of mentality that hardcore gamers demonstrate, when one year they get the WhizBang(R) CyberWhatever(TM) 3000 AGP card with 128MB of RAM and are all "wow, look at me", and the next year, they wouldn't be caught dead with anything less than a WhizBang(R) CyberWhatever(TM) Pro 5000 AGP card with 256MB of RAM... Because, I mean, the Pro 5000 is "The Standard" now, and anyone with less is "obviously a limpdicked little fagot" (sic). (End sarcasm)...
Companies that speak of "The Standard", to me, reek of rat-race-ism, and-- to be frank-- of pure faddishness. Remember: "The Standard" == "What everyone else is doing". And "everyone else" is running Windows on their x86 hardware, and we all know how sterling an example of quality engineering either of those things are... (no flames, please)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
" 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).
First they "acquired" Slackware. And then sold it off/gave it away after doing nothing with it. Then they "acquired" BSD and have done little with it. Now they have linked up with RedHat for embedded Linux tools?
When WindRiver Systems (WRS) came in several years ago to give a presentation on their strategies for Tornado and VxWorks products we were disappointed. After two hours of the pain and agony of learning nothing we didn't already know, we asked "where's the beef"? (old expression, but I think you "get it") They told us their entire strategy was to become a $1BILLION company inside of a year. Some strategy, eh?
Our experience is that WRS provides marginal support on the VxWorks products, and have made a mess of their licensing systems and servers (that track tools use and enforce their payment structures). Let's hope WRS doesn't take away from the strength of the Open Source community, the tools development it undertakes, and the great support it gives...
Since Wind River's site apparently runs on an embedded platform, you can read about Red Hat and Wind River Partner to Develop Linux Based Solution for Device Software Optimization from Red Hat's site instead.
In the past 5 r so years, Wind River has announce grand "startegic aliances" with everyone (with the possible exception of M$) that has ahd there 30 seconds of fame. I even rember back whne they sold a C compiler for various early *NIX machines on teh 70's. I suppose they do OK, but they are certainly not great "geussers of teh future direction" of things!
nix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity. (Dennis Ritchie) ~
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?
They've got lots of crappy, overpriced proprietary software, and to boot they've tried stealing as much from Open Source software as they could get away with. I look forward to seeing them actually contribute something to the community, but I'm not holding my breath. I suspect they'll be like many of the other big names in the embedded space, who are mostly trying to tie people into their own platforms. I am pleased that I can finally tell the snooty VxWorks developers whom I've argued with over the years "I told you so", though. :)
And "everyone else" is running Windows on their x86 hardware, and we all know how sterling an example of quality engineering either of those things are... (no flames, please)
Dude, look around. You see any flames coming your way here?
The coolest voice ever.
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.
It was Wind River that didn't want Slackware. BSDi not only kept Slackware to the end, but Slackware was also briefly associated with ixSystems (the last bit of BSDi that remained after Wind River pillaged them, and still remains today I think).
It wouldn't surprise me if this deal is not the "step three profit" that Wind River expects. After that, maybe they'll go the SCO route and claim to own everything. I certainly wouldn't touch any code submissions from them with a ten-foot-pole.
Well my experience with Wind River was when they bought pSOS, they quickly terminated them as they were their biggest RTOS competitor at the time.
People say that Microsoft are anti competitive well Wind River certainly know how to destroy the competition.....don't be fooled by this Linux purchase Red Hat Embedded Linux will be disolved into VxWorks.
Wind River RTOS licenses cost the earth and their technical support isn't that great.
The high cost of Red Hat enterprise Linux is really for the the round the clock support. I don't think Gentoo developers would be very interested in doing 24x7 customer support service for free?
Besides I don't see much harm in what Red Hat is doing. Nearly all software distributed by Red Hat is open source. Red Hat is getting corporations to pay for the development of kernel code, gcc, glibc, gnome software, documentation and we all benefit in the end! It helps pay for great hackers to do what to like to do full time instead of as a hobby.
Anyone else wonder if this might have something to do with the problems with the Spirit rover that just happened to be running a VxWare OS?
Maybe the next rover will be running Red Hat Embedded Linux...
Maybe they should make a multi-booting rover. Win2k, a few flavors of Linux, and *BSD. They could boot into Windows to play solitaire on the rover during slow research days. The next rover should also have a nice speaker system on it, and should be able to stream MP3's from NASA to play... To keep the Aliens away from it like in Mars Attacks!... Would hate for it to get stolen and turned into a Little martion child's RC car like Solourner...
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?
" It's just not the same now that they ditched us desktop Linux users.
See subject title.
"Now their main business is selling overpriced licenses for their "enterprise" Linux distribution, which really isn't all that much more bulletproof than most Linux kernels/applications out there."
Overpriced as opposed to what? A free distro like debian with no real support?
"Sure, I love Linux, but I think the tides may turn away from Red Hat."
Who knows. But it isn't yet.
"Gentoo anyone?"
God no.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
"Partners"?
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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...
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.
Same is true for the Linux world. The same statement, exactly, can be made for Open Source development.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --