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Panasonic Forms Embedded Linux Incubator

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the more-corporations-on-the-bandwagon dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Panasonic has opened an embedded Linux incubator in Silicon Valley, where it hopes to host and collaborate with several Linux startups, in exchange for 'first right-of-refusal on up to 10 percent of the startup's next institutional funding round'. From the article: 'Panasonic uses other open sources OSes in addition to Linux, but Linux has become a top choice due to its cost-effectiveness and robust nature,' according to the Center's director. Panasonic is in the same corporate family as Matsushita, which is one of the founding members of the Consumer Electronics Linux Foundation (CELF)."

6 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. If Panasonic like Linux... by zenmojodaddy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... is there any chance of them selling a Toughbook preloaded with it? Please?

    I have a second hand 233Mhz CF-27 running Slackware and it beats the crap out of the £1000 + Acer with WinXP my boss bought himself...

    1. Re:If Panasonic like Linux... by stripyd · · Score: 5, Interesting
      ... is there any chance of them selling a Toughbook preloaded with it? Please?

      Chance would be a fine thing. Being windows-ignorant I first slung GNU/linux onto a cf-25 in 1996 and racked up nearly half a million miles with it before replacing it with a T1 which I am now bumming round marinas in the balkans with. Great kit (survived falls from moving westfalia van, soakings in the tropics and all kinds of abuse) but forget support: UK support won't even answer your emails on OS neutral hardware questions 85% of the time.

      Before straying too far off topic, I doubt the development of drivers for panasonic embedded linux products is going to leak over into helping out the toughbook user who wants a copy of lindvd or needs to get that SD slot working. On the upside though, most everything on my T1 already works out of the box with SuSE 9.3 (except the SD card slot, but including the winmodem and acpi). Things aint the labour of love they used to be 10 years ago. Check out the reviews of toughbooks on Werner Heuser's invaluable tuxmobil.org.

      Linux on toughbooks always struck me as being an ideal combination (all the tools you need for any bizzare geek situation in any corner of the globe). Anyone know of any large organisations using toughbooks with customised linux (with or without Panasonics complicity)?

    2. Re:If Panasonic like Linux... by stripyd · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Did you get sound working on that CF-25?

      Yep, definitely. I don't remember which sound chip it used but I vaguely remember it worked fine with the SB driver with a 2.2.something kernel. Sadly it's currently in storage a bit too far away to easily check...

      maybe I should try and keep this on topic with the observation that the average device panasonic are looking at embedded linux for probably has more resources than my old 133MHz/40MB RAM cf-25 :-)

  2. Smart move ? by BlueTrin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was wondering myself if this would have an effect on Panasonic's products. Because if you want to use Linux, you just need to hire some talented programmers with some experience at developping hardware using Linux. What is the real effect (if there is any) of such an announcement compared to creating a new department within the company or changing their strategy, asidde from the marketing effect ?

    --
    Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
  3. I believe...... by amodm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    apart from the robust nature of Linux that they are talking about, one of the biggest reasons why Linux might be helpful in the embedded scenario is the almost infinite level of customization and tuning that can be done with it.

    In the embedded scenario, its the customization that counts more IMHO.

    PS: Not that robustness doesn't count. But (as someone pointed out) there ARE systems which come pretty close, if not better, to linux.

  4. Re:but Linux has become a top choice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Actually, I think the main difference between Linux and *BSD is that *BSD doesn't come packaged with politics and a revolution. The BSD folks are more interested in make a stable, secure, usable OS than preaching from a soapbox about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket if people don't use the GPL. The different BSD distros have their own particular goals, but there is a lot of sharing between them. OTOH, Linux distros are more concerned with promoting their own distro and to hell with everyone else. So, yeah... there are a lot of differences between BSD and Linux.