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What Embedded Linux Distros Would You Support?

Posted by Cliff on from the top-of-the-embedded-pile dept.

dannys42 asks: "I work for a cool company that works with, among other things, embedded Linux systems. We'd like to provide an SDK for our customers and will likely support one or two Linux distros, plus Windows+Cygwin as build environments. Up until now, I'd assumed that most corporate developers were using Fedora, simply because of its similarity to Red Hat Enterprise and for its maturity. However, I'm curious to know, for those fortunate enough to develop for embedded Linux, what distribution do you expect to be supported for a build environment?"

2 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Please don't tie it to a distro by jnelson4765 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I prefer Fedora, my co-worker prefers Slackware - and we are equally productive. Supporting as many distros as possible would be a great goal - if you keep it as a completely seperate installation and don't try to "integrate" it into the host OS (I'm thinking of some Samsung printer drivers as a particularly bad example).

    For example, Plone ships with its own version of Python and Zope to keep the host OS's versions of either from breaking the application, and lets you update the host OS independently of the application. This is a good thing.

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    Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
  2. Pick the biggest and support it by johnjaydk · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Disclaimer: I do embedded stuff for a living.

    For any semi-pro work in this space, You'll have a dedicated development host (read PC) that runs EXACTLY the Linux distro that was supplied for (and together with) the SDK. Time is just to short to dick around and customize for 17 different linux distro's.

    Case in point: I recently picked up an ARM5 development kit from Arcom. http://www.arcom.com/entry-level-devkit-linux-vipe r.htm and it came with a Fedora Core 5 DVD and an SDK for core 5. So I slapped the whole thing on an empty PC and was ready to rumble in an hour or two. I didn't even update the core 5 install (behind firewall etc.) in order make certain that the SDK was an exact fit.

    That's (unfortunately) how You do it on a linux host. Otherwise You can take Your chances with the hell of CygWin and Windoze.

    My point is: Chose one distro, ship it together with Your kit and make absolutely sure that it works 100%.

    For what it's worth, I think Linux blows chunks as an embedded RTOS. It's too damn big and the real-time performance just isn't there. Go with http://ecos.sourceware.org/ (free), VxWorks or QNX.

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    TCAP-Abort