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Interest in Embedded Linux Remains Low

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the it's-always-winter-and-never-christmas dept.

burnin1965 writes "According to EE Times interest in embedded linux remains low. I was surprised to see their headline considering I just purchased a Sony TV which runs linux and I assisted my brother in setting up an Actiontec DSL modem which runs linux. A few years back I had only heard of devices that ran embedded linux and now that they are starting show up everywhere interest is low? The survey did bring up three issues which should be addressed by the embedded linux community, whether those issues are misconceptions or actual problems. 1) Incompatibility with software, applications, and drivers. 2) Performance or real time capability. And 3) support."

1 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. big surprise. by nblender · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Hardware designers generally start with an eval-board of some sort so they can hack up their add-on hardware and get something running on the bench before drawing schematics on napkins and starting to do a layout. As such, they need a 'board support package'. You generally buy that from an embedded systems vendor. You generally don't just download the latest linux kernel and start porting drivers and vm maps. Your management will likely want you to get a BSP from a commercial vendor to whom they pay maintenance so your engineers can hassle them about bugs in the bootloader, etc... Your choices are limited. Generally something like Montavista, Windriver, QNX. In my experience, Montavista makes it hard to do business with them. You practically have to bribe them to talk to you in the first place; even when you're waving around PO's. You've already bought the hardware from Intel or RadiSys and now you need support for the BSP. When you finally get a price, it's $18k per seat for a GCC license, and support is $5k/year; maximum of 5 incidents.

    QNX on the other hand, will practically send an engineer on site to hold your hand while you get your BSP running. Support is cheap and the runtime licenses are down in the noise threshold.

    Sure, QNX has a few issues. So does VxWorks. But Linux is a real lose, and I've tried.

    Frankly, if I was starting from scratch and rolling my own BSP, I'd choose NetBSD. Embedded friendly license, code purity, and it probably already has your processor arch.