Linux Kernel 2.4 Or 2.6 In Embedded System?

Posted by kdawson on Sunday January 4, 2009 @01:11AM from the comfort-on-the-trailing-edge dept.

snikulin writes "My 6-year-old embedded software happily runs on kernel v2.4 on an XScale CPU. The software gets a bunch (tens of megabytes) of data from an FPGA over a PCI-X bus and pushes it out over GigE to data-processing equipment. The tool chain is based on the somewhat outdated gcc v2.95. Now, for certain technical reasons we want to jump from the ARM-based custom board to an Atom-based COM Express module. This implies that I'll need to re-create a Linux RAM disk from scratch along with the tool chain. The functionality of the software will be essentially the same. My question: is it worth it to jump to kernel 2.6, or better to stick with the old and proven 2.4? What will I gain and what will I lose if I stay at 2.4 (besides the modern gcc compiler and the other related dev tools)?"

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Re:Why Linux? by miknix · 2009-01-04 02:42 · Score: 5, Interesting

Exactly, I would not say it better.
As a member of the gentoo embedded team I would recommend the use of crossdev to generate the toolchain.
By emerging crossdev-wrappers and setting up some gentooish cross-compiler environment, it is possible to cross-compile (by simply emerging them) a lot of packages on portage.
Emerge will take care of most things leaving the most ugly cross-compile errors for you.
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/embedded/cross-development.xml
Regarding the guide, don't use the xmerge script. Just emerge crossdev-wrappers instead.
Feel free to join #gentoo-embedded on irc.freenode.net
Happy xcompiling.