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.'"
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.
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
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...
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?
Try using ext2 et al on a flash file system.
You only get 100,000 writes on an flash chip. You need a strategy for minimizing writes. No general purpose file system made for a hard disk is going to do that optimally.
In any event, the type of glitch they had on the rover wasn't an obvious file system bug. It was more one of those confluence of supposedly normally handleable events that in concert with each other make for a bad situation.
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
Indeed, Wind River had bought BSDi, which had earlier bought Walnut Creek and acquired close ties with FreeBSD; thus quite a few FreeBSD developers ended up working with Wind River. But the honeymoon didn't last long... I have no idea what went wrong. But even now they claim ownership of the BSD, BSD/OS and FreeBSD trademarks... There has been a long-term plan for the FreeBSD Foundation to get control of the trademark, but I don't know where that's at.
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. :)
I'm suprized to see you say this. I strongly suspect you don't use QNX or do embedded deveopment...
Just for kicks, I'm running Firebird on QNX. I've got an project using an small footprint open source webserver and mySQL. I build my embedded projects with gcc, coded with emacs. For profiling and debugging I use their version of the Eclipse IDE -- the open source IDE that has had a massive amount of source contributed by QNX. In fact I bet you 10 bucks that WindRiver's new Linux tools will actually be using QNX's tools, just rebranded.
-my2cents
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.
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...