There is some confusion, young padawan. People are talking about both VMWare and WINE- two completely different things. For VMWare you have to buy a copy of Windows, for WINE you do not.
WINE is an imlpementation of the Win32 API for Linux, not emulation.
No, running Photoshop under a real Windows on VMWare isn't a big deal- it's running Photoshop on Windows- wow! But, Photoshop on WINE counts as running Photoshop on Linux. It may be Win32, but it's an Win32 for Linux. With Linux especially- it's host to a million different frameworks and GUI toolkits, and not one of them is "native"- unless Motif is back as reigning king!
Likewise, I'm running XChat on Windows 2000. But, it uses an implementation of GTK+ for Windows. Does that make it a Linux application running under emulation? Nope.
Re:Former perl, python, java geek gone to Ruby
on
Ruby 1.8.0 Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Common Lisp is another story - I think it's fun to program in, and it can be very productive, but I'm not sure how clean I would say it is.:P It's a *huge* language, very interesting, and with a lot of functionality. It's a beautiful language, in its way- but so is perl (to me).:)
Sure, it's clean compared to C++, but not too much else!:P
Re:Former perl, python, java geek gone to Ruby
on
Ruby 1.8.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
It's kind of funny- McCarthy didn't intend Lisp to keep the ultra-simple paren-based syntax, but to add an algol-ish syntax down the line. Mmmm, parse tree!:)
Also, in the case you anti-parensers don't actually have any experience programming (which is often the case), you can get pre-made packages for a number of Scheme and other Lisp implementations which allow you to use C- or Python-like syntax. There is one for KSM, , and python/haskell/C syntaxes for Scheme, among others.
Re:Former perl, python, java geek gone to Ruby
on
Ruby 1.8.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
:)
Indeed- many other languages have tons of syntax past message sending. Incidentally, the syntax I think isn't needed in Ruby doesn't have much to do directly with message sending/method invocation.
Forth and Prolog are two other good examples. I should start using those instead of mentioning Scheme or Lisp. Lisp is a very clean and elegant language, but too many people just make a bad joke about parens being too confusing. Now there's a language pretty much all of the syntax can be summarized in:
As others have mentioned, getting RAM beats paging at all.
What I don't know if others have mentioned is the write limitation of flash. Most flash chips have a limitation on how many times they can be written- oftentimes, only 100k writes can be done. With a swap system designed to read and write as much as it wants, not considering this problem specific to flash, your flash swap drive could die relatively quickly...
A RAM-based solid state drive is another story, of course- but I imagine this 4 GB card is flash, not some UPS'd RAM module.
Solid state drives have existed for a while, this QikDrive is nothing new. You've been able to get solid states which connect via IDE for a while- some use RAM like this product and some various types of flash.
The question the poster asked isn't when it'll be possible to do this, it's been possible for a long time; rather, when will most people just have a solid state drive rather than a regular hd?
Re:Former perl, python, java geek gone to Ruby
on
Ruby 1.8.0 Released
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The basic syntax of ruby is very clean (a fact which is somewhat obscured by the "syntactic sugar" provided for some commonly used features (such as operators) and the provision of aliases for some global objects that are intended to ease the transition from perl). The basic syntax is:
So C++ and Perl must be languages with simple, elegant and clean syntax, right? The method call syntax doesn't mean a thing. (well, if the language was particularily ugly it would- like some OO Cobol implementations)
Ruby has substantially less syntax than Perl and C++, that much is true and pretty commonly known. However, IMHO, Ruby has a bit much syntax, compared to languages like Smalltalk or Scheme. Smalltalk is a language which manages to be expressive, but without the amount of syntax that Ruby has.
Geez! Is it so had to say "Bush has nothing to do with this."?
No, it's not hard, but it's not something I can say with certainty. Maybe I'm nuts, but I don't like to make absolute statements like the one you reccomend- there is a chance, however small (or not-small, I can't say, I've no clue)- that Bush had something to do with the Aral Sea disappearing.
It's a simple matter of probability. As a scientist, I don't make silly absolute statements that I can't back.
I don't suppose it was because you tried to start a little whorehouse on base, was it? You know, privates like pee-pee and punani and enterprise like an 'enterprising young man.' So, am I right? Or was it really because you were a low-ranking schmuck who never advanced because Star Trek kept you from putting forth any effort?
I think Bush is fucking up a lot of things in his own country and abroad, but indeed good Otter- it's rather unlikely Bush had anything to do with this at all.
However, a combination of Soviet irrigation and the regional and worldwide state of environment and resource use policies is likely the cuprit....unless he was secretely draining the sea, piping the water elsewhere, like he wanted to do with Lake Superior!:P (retard)
Heh- perl, the postmodern language... A common excuse for its appearance of being a rubbishy collage.
"Oh no good sir- what you see before you isn't a child's mess, it is in fact ART! High Art! Postmodern, abstract! If you can't understand it, well, you must be some sort of stunted freak with no appreciation for anything of intelligence in life."
That said, I enjoy perl on occasion, to that I'll admit. However, I have a big number of annoyances with Perl 5. Part of it is with Wall's assertions about perl being postmodern- not a mess; how it naturally follows the way the human mind thinks- perhaps his, but not mine and a great many others; that perl resembles english- no more than most languages concieved by english speakers.
Ok, I think I've figured it out- all of your antagonism stems from an initial misunderstanding of what I said at first, and have been misinterpreting my every word after that.
Given that you're unable to see the most obvious benefits of Linux over Windows CE for the embedded hardware developer, I'd say I still question the 'reasoning' behind your actual movites for contributing to this thread.
I understand the benefit sof Linux over Windows CE in plenty of situations. Re-read my posts if you must. You seem to have skipped the parts where I say good things about embedded Linux. Linux is great. Linux is swell. I LOVE LINUX! I run Linux in a number of places. However, that doesn't change the fact that what you can do with Linux, you can do with CE.
Anywho, here is some food for thought- I saw it over on NewMobileComputing. Although, since it is an article stating that total cost of development for WinCE on embedded systems can be cheaper than the same Linux solution, I imagine it is just a lie concocted by the Evil Horned One, Billy G himself, right?
Not saying I trust the study, but interesting none the less... But EVIL! Don't bother reading that link- Linux is your best option anywhere!
Man, it'd sure be nice to get a chunk of that really small Linux out in the field. On my Zaurus, Linux+Qtopia takes up a whopping 18 MB of RAM on boot (WinCE takes up 2-3 MB). It'd be nice if Linux wasn't so memory hungry on that particular embedded system.:)
Man, it would do you well to read everything in my post, not just skim for lines that, taken out of context, incite the anger of linux cheerleaders around the world...
No, really- go ahead, read the post.
Ok, still didn't get it? Here's a juicy tidbit from my post: "...and no one that I know is even considering using Linux for an embedded system, besides PDAs. That statement is 100% true; anyone could make a statement like this. However, it doesn't mean that no one is using Linux for embedded systems, plenty of folks are."
I'm quite a bit younger than you, a wee one. Back in 1991, I wasn't running Linux- but then again, I didn't have a regular computer. I was lucky enough to have recieved a Tandy/Radio Shack PC-3 handheld computer the year before, along with thermal printer docking station and cassette tape drive. My uncle got it for free, and gave it to me no less. A whop[omg 1.4 K of RAM. As a new programmer, 10 years old, I never seemed to notice havin so little.:)
I later found out that brand new, these things were very resonably priced- makes you wonder why more nerds didn't have them! The PC-3 - sans docking station/thermal printer or the cassette drive- was only $99. Back in 1983, that was dirt cheap for a fully programmable BASIC computer, with a QWERTY keyboard, some expansion option, and a 20-some character display.
My first experience with a "real" computer was with a second-hand XT that another uncle gave me in 1992. Dual floppies, ooohhhh yeah. Along with it, he gave me a bunch of disks, including the current version of Minix (on a 6-7 disks labeled/usr/root/usr2, etc) as well as DOS and a bunch of programming languages for it.
In the end, I stuck with DOS over Minix though. I loved to use Minix- just playing around with it, exploring what binaries were on the disks I had for it. But then again, only MS-DOS had Turbo Prolog- and no matter how much more I studied C, I could do so much more in a few lines of Prolog than I could with C. Heck, I never even did any logic programming, just regular procedural-type stuff, although you had to phrase it in terms of Prolog...:)
Nobody I know is even *considering* using CE in an embedded device: they are losing that Market, and losing it badly....and no one that I know is even considering using Linux for an embedded system, besides PDAs. That statement is 100% true; anyone could make a statement like this. However, it doesn't mean that no one is using Linux for embedded systems, plenty of folks are.
Umm... have a look inside your average eval board vendor catalog, and you'll see more than just a little hardware plagiarism.
That is true, but it doesn't negate what I said. Do you really think that for any given CPU, all of the sdk/eval boards are the same, save a couple of options? (ethernet or not, one or two serial ports, one-line LCD or a TFT, etc)
So anyway, has your PC running "MS AgitProp 4.5" blue screened again, yet?
I don't own a PC. I don't own any MS software, Windows and MS AgitProp (tm) included. It may come as a shock, but you don't have to be a MS proponent or even a user to attempt to speak the voice of reason. I may use Linux, but there is nothing in the EULA (yet!) that forces me into the position of being a blind cheerleader for Linux upon installation...
I never said that there weren't advantages or disadvantages to Linux, Windows, TRON, etc. Perhaps my point isn't simple enough for some slashkids to understand without having to think, but none of my statements are about Windows being as good as Linux for some things- or about Linux being as good as or better TRON for others.
I can: a) see if Microsoft Windows CE supports it, and if not either give up and use the CPU they want me to use or pay thousands for them to support my xxx_yyy CPU, or b) port Linux to it myself freely in a couple of days.
Or c) you could port WinCE to your hardware in about the same amount of time as you would Linux. There would be money involved in becoming a WinCE licencee, of course- but if you're a hardware manufacturer, that amount of money is relatively trivial. MS doesn't hand out the source for CE to everyone (well, it does now with the "shared source" release, but let's pretend here), but if you're going to be shipping CE on your devices, the full source is part of the license deal.
You can't have really thought that all those machines that run CE are all just some standard hardware platform, same instruction set, same line of CPUs, same bus, same misc hardware, same hardware bootloader, same BIOS or BIOS equivalent... If a manufacturer wants to create a device that runs CE or Linux, it usually involves a bit or porting and adaptation, unless it's standard PC hardware.
And, FYI, you've got TRON running in your home, somewhere, if you're an average American consumer with credit cards that you use. Every American uses TRON, somehow, at least 2 or 3 times a day.
I don't doubt that I've used TRON many times without knowing it- likewise, I've used QNX, vxWorks, OS/2, Linux, Windows CE and a bucketload of other OSes without being vaguely aware of it.
Do I have TRON running on my credit card? If not, how am I using TRON with my CC in my home? I don't have a CC reader or any POS hardware.
Anyway, my point wasn't "TRON sucks," but more so contending your statement about Linux being able to cleanly replace TRON. Linux could be used for most of what TRON could, provided time and money was spent adapting it to purposes for which TRON already works very well. Along the same lines, if one had the time and money to spend, Windows could be adapted to doing everything that Linux does now.
pffffft- I used to use Minix too. Still have a bunch of 5.25" floppies for my XT (long gone), which I should really toss one of these days. But being a Linux user since day one? Since the first release, sure. Or, since the first time Linus may have shared it before the first release. But day one- in Linus's bedroom, hacking out the first Linux code? C'mon man, you may have had the forsight to actually create account those years ago, but it'll take some flashier credentials to establish you as Linus's day-one monkey.:)
TRON was a kick ass project. And everything we've wanted to do with TRON, we can now do with Linux.
Linux was a kick ass project. And everything we've wanted to do with Linux, we can now do with some flavor of Windows. There is no reason that what people do with Linux can't be done on Windows CE or desktop Windoze. Do we simply toss out Linux as an option because we could do the same on Windows? Do we simply toss out TRON as an option because we could do the same with Linux?
Yes, in everwhere but Japan, we'll probably never touch TRON and its family. It's all in Japanese, built by Japanese engineers for Japanese people. Which isn't to day localization to English and other languages can't be done, but with all the competition, I can't see Ken-san thinking an English version of BTRON is the most important thing for the TRON world right now. Which is a shame- BTRON is a pretty sweet system, MicroScript beating the pants off of shell scripting any day.:)
A bunch of things run this OS. Like mentioned in the article, a lot of embedded systems- cameras, phones, appliances, cars, etc. But, TRON and BTRON also power desktop computers and PDAs. The BrainPad TiPo is the only PDA I know of which runs *TRON, but there is probably others.
Slashdot Mirror
There is some confusion, young padawan. People are talking about both VMWare and WINE- two completely different things. For VMWare you have to buy a copy of Windows, for WINE you do not.
WINE is an imlpementation of the Win32 API for Linux, not emulation.
No, running Photoshop under a real Windows on VMWare isn't a big deal- it's running Photoshop on Windows- wow! But, Photoshop on WINE counts as running Photoshop on Linux. It may be Win32, but it's an Win32 for Linux. With Linux especially- it's host to a million different frameworks and GUI toolkits, and not one of them is "native"- unless Motif is back as reigning king!
Likewise, I'm running XChat on Windows 2000. But, it uses an implementation of GTK+ for Windows. Does that make it a Linux application running under emulation? Nope.
Common Lisp is another story - I think it's fun to program in, and it can be very productive, but I'm not sure how clean I would say it is. :P It's a *huge* language, very interesting, and with a lot of functionality. It's a beautiful language, in its way- but so is perl (to me). :)
:P
Sure, it's clean compared to C++, but not too much else!
It's kind of funny- McCarthy didn't intend Lisp to keep the ultra-simple paren-based syntax, but to add an algol-ish syntax down the line. Mmmm, parse tree! :)
Also, in the case you anti-parensers don't actually have any experience programming (which is often the case), you can get pre-made packages for a number of Scheme and other Lisp implementations which allow you to use C- or Python-like syntax. There is one for KSM, , and python/haskell/C syntaxes for Scheme, among others.
:)
::= (function_name arg1 arg2 ... argn)
Indeed- many other languages have tons of syntax past message sending. Incidentally, the syntax I think isn't needed in Ruby doesn't have much to do directly with message sending/method invocation.
Forth and Prolog are two other good examples. I should start using those instead of mentioning Scheme or Lisp. Lisp is a very clean and elegant language, but too many people just make a bad joke about parens being too confusing. Now there's a language pretty much all of the syntax can be summarized in:
function_call
Anywho, you're right.
As others have mentioned, getting RAM beats paging at all.
What I don't know if others have mentioned is the write limitation of flash. Most flash chips have a limitation on how many times they can be written- oftentimes, only 100k writes can be done. With a swap system designed to read and write as much as it wants, not considering this problem specific to flash, your flash swap drive could die relatively quickly...
A RAM-based solid state drive is another story, of course- but I imagine this 4 GB card is flash, not some UPS'd RAM module.
Solid state drives have existed for a while, this QikDrive is nothing new. You've been able to get solid states which connect via IDE for a while- some use RAM like this product and some various types of flash.
The question the poster asked isn't when it'll be possible to do this, it's been possible for a long time; rather, when will most people just have a solid state drive rather than a regular hd?
The basic syntax of ruby is very clean (a fact which is somewhat obscured by the "syntactic sugar" provided for some commonly used features (such as operators) and the provision of aliases for some global objects that are intended to ease the transition from perl). The basic syntax is:
::= object.method_name arg1,arg2,...argn
::= object.method_name(arg1, arg2,...argn)
::= object->method_name(arg1, arg2,...argn)
method_call
Along the same line, you could just as easily say that C++'s basic syntax is:
method_call
and perl's:
method_call
So C++ and Perl must be languages with simple, elegant and clean syntax, right? The method call syntax doesn't mean a thing. (well, if the language was particularily ugly it would- like some OO Cobol implementations)
Ruby has substantially less syntax than Perl and C++, that much is true and pretty commonly known. However, IMHO, Ruby has a bit much syntax, compared to languages like Smalltalk or Scheme. Smalltalk is a language which manages to be expressive, but without the amount of syntax that Ruby has.
Geez! Is it so had to say "Bush has nothing to do with this."?
No, it's not hard, but it's not something I can say with certainty. Maybe I'm nuts, but I don't like to make absolute statements like the one you reccomend- there is a chance, however small (or not-small, I can't say, I've no clue)- that Bush had something to do with the Aral Sea disappearing.
It's a simple matter of probability. As a scientist, I don't make silly absolute statements that I can't back.
Like I said- Just curious. If you actually think what I said was entirely serious, you've been in the militarty too long. :P
Ok, I'll bite:
Private Enterprise? Going to explain for us?
I don't suppose it was because you tried to start a little whorehouse on base, was it? You know, privates like pee-pee and punani and enterprise like an 'enterprising young man.' So, am I right? Or was it really because you were a low-ranking schmuck who never advanced because Star Trek kept you from putting forth any effort?
Just curious!
That, and the flow is very reduced by that lil thing we call the Hoover Dam.
I think Bush is fucking up a lot of things in his own country and abroad, but indeed good Otter- it's rather unlikely Bush had anything to do with this at all.
...unless he was secretely draining the sea, piping the water elsewhere, like he wanted to do with Lake Superior! :P (retard)
However, a combination of Soviet irrigation and the regional and worldwide state of environment and resource use policies is likely the cuprit.
Heh- perl, the postmodern language... A common excuse for its appearance of being a rubbishy collage.
:)
"Oh no good sir- what you see before you isn't a child's mess, it is in fact ART! High Art! Postmodern, abstract! If you can't understand it, well, you must be some sort of stunted freak with no appreciation for anything of intelligence in life."
That said, I enjoy perl on occasion, to that I'll admit. However, I have a big number of annoyances with Perl 5. Part of it is with Wall's assertions about perl being postmodern- not a mess; how it naturally follows the way the human mind thinks- perhaps his, but not mine and a great many others; that perl resembles english- no more than most languages concieved by english speakers.
Ok, done ranting.
Ok, I think I've figured it out- all of your antagonism stems from an initial misunderstanding of what I said at first, and have been misinterpreting my every word after that.
:)
Given that you're unable to see the most obvious benefits of Linux over Windows CE for the embedded hardware developer, I'd say I still question the 'reasoning' behind your actual movites for contributing to this thread.
I understand the benefit sof Linux over Windows CE in plenty of situations. Re-read my posts if you must. You seem to have skipped the parts where I say good things about embedded Linux. Linux is great. Linux is swell. I LOVE LINUX! I run Linux in a number of places. However, that doesn't change the fact that what you can do with Linux, you can do with CE.
Anywho, here is some food for thought- I saw it over on NewMobileComputing. Although, since it is an article stating that total cost of development for WinCE on embedded systems can be cheaper than the same Linux solution, I imagine it is just a lie concocted by the Evil Horned One, Billy G himself, right?
Not saying I trust the study, but interesting none the less... But EVIL! Don't bother reading that link- Linux is your best option anywhere!
Man, it'd sure be nice to get a chunk of that really small Linux out in the field. On my Zaurus, Linux+Qtopia takes up a whopping 18 MB of RAM on boot (WinCE takes up 2-3 MB). It'd be nice if Linux wasn't so memory hungry on that particular embedded system.
Man, it would do you well to read everything in my post, not just skim for lines that, taken out of context, incite the anger of linux cheerleaders around the world...
No, really- go ahead, read the post.
Ok, still didn't get it? Here's a juicy tidbit from my post: "...and no one that I know is even considering using Linux for an embedded system, besides PDAs. That statement is 100% true; anyone could make a statement like this. However, it doesn't mean that no one is using Linux for embedded systems, plenty of folks are."
Does it make sense yet?
I'm quite a bit younger than you, a wee one. Back in 1991, I wasn't running Linux- but then again, I didn't have a regular computer. I was lucky enough to have recieved a Tandy/Radio Shack PC-3 handheld computer the year before, along with thermal printer docking station and cassette tape drive. My uncle got it for free, and gave it to me no less. A whop[omg 1.4 K of RAM. As a new programmer, 10 years old, I never seemed to notice havin so little. :)
/usr /root /usr2, etc) as well as DOS and a bunch of programming languages for it.
:)
I later found out that brand new, these things were very resonably priced- makes you wonder why more nerds didn't have them! The PC-3 - sans docking station/thermal printer or the cassette drive- was only $99. Back in 1983, that was dirt cheap for a fully programmable BASIC computer, with a QWERTY keyboard, some expansion option, and a 20-some character display.
My first experience with a "real" computer was with a second-hand XT that another uncle gave me in 1992. Dual floppies, ooohhhh yeah. Along with it, he gave me a bunch of disks, including the current version of Minix (on a 6-7 disks labeled
In the end, I stuck with DOS over Minix though. I loved to use Minix- just playing around with it, exploring what binaries were on the disks I had for it. But then again, only MS-DOS had Turbo Prolog- and no matter how much more I studied C, I could do so much more in a few lines of Prolog than I could with C. Heck, I never even did any logic programming, just regular procedural-type stuff, although you had to phrase it in terms of Prolog...
Nobody I know is even *considering* using CE in an embedded device: they are losing that Market, and losing it badly. ...and no one that I know is even considering using Linux for an embedded system, besides PDAs. That statement is 100% true; anyone could make a statement like this. However, it doesn't mean that no one is using Linux for embedded systems, plenty of folks are.
Umm... have a look inside your average eval board vendor catalog, and you'll see more than just a little hardware plagiarism.
That is true, but it doesn't negate what I said. Do you really think that for any given CPU, all of the sdk/eval boards are the same, save a couple of options? (ethernet or not, one or two serial ports, one-line LCD or a TFT, etc)
So anyway, has your PC running "MS AgitProp 4.5" blue screened again, yet?
I don't own a PC. I don't own any MS software, Windows and MS AgitProp (tm) included. It may come as a shock, but you don't have to be a MS proponent or even a user to attempt to speak the voice of reason. I may use Linux, but there is nothing in the EULA (yet!) that forces me into the position of being a blind cheerleader for Linux upon installation...
I never said that there weren't advantages or disadvantages to Linux, Windows, TRON, etc. Perhaps my point isn't simple enough for some slashkids to understand without having to think, but none of my statements are about Windows being as good as Linux for some things- or about Linux being as good as or better TRON for others.
I can: a) see if Microsoft Windows CE supports it, and if not either give up and use the CPU they want me to use or pay thousands for them to support my xxx_yyy CPU, or b) port Linux to it myself freely in a couple of days.
Or c) you could port WinCE to your hardware in about the same amount of time as you would Linux. There would be money involved in becoming a WinCE licencee, of course- but if you're a hardware manufacturer, that amount of money is relatively trivial. MS doesn't hand out the source for CE to everyone (well, it does now with the "shared source" release, but let's pretend here), but if you're going to be shipping CE on your devices, the full source is part of the license deal.
You can't have really thought that all those machines that run CE are all just some standard hardware platform, same instruction set, same line of CPUs, same bus, same misc hardware, same hardware bootloader, same BIOS or BIOS equivalent... If a manufacturer wants to create a device that runs CE or Linux, it usually involves a bit or porting and adaptation, unless it's standard PC hardware.
And, FYI, you've got TRON running in your home, somewhere, if you're an average American consumer with credit cards that you use. Every American uses TRON, somehow, at least 2 or 3 times a day.
I don't doubt that I've used TRON many times without knowing it- likewise, I've used QNX, vxWorks, OS/2, Linux, Windows CE and a bucketload of other OSes without being vaguely aware of it.
Do I have TRON running on my credit card? If not, how am I using TRON with my CC in my home? I don't have a CC reader or any POS hardware.
Anyway, my point wasn't "TRON sucks," but more so contending your statement about Linux being able to cleanly replace TRON. Linux could be used for most of what TRON could, provided time and money was spent adapting it to purposes for which TRON already works very well. Along the same lines, if one had the time and money to spend, Windows could be adapted to doing everything that Linux does now.
pffffft- I used to use Minix too. Still have a bunch of 5.25" floppies for my XT (long gone), which I should really toss one of these days. But being a Linux user since day one? Since the first release, sure. Or, since the first time Linus may have shared it before the first release. But day one- in Linus's bedroom, hacking out the first Linux code? C'mon man, you may have had the forsight to actually create account those years ago, but it'll take some flashier credentials to establish you as Linus's day-one monkey. :)
Duuuude- maybe that's what he means! What is on our memory cards is what runs them, you know like an OS... PORN: THE GLOBAL OPERATING SYSTEM!
TRON was a kick ass project. And everything we've wanted to do with TRON, we can now do with Linux.
:)
Linux was a kick ass project. And everything we've wanted to do with Linux, we can now do with some flavor of Windows. There is no reason that what people do with Linux can't be done on Windows CE or desktop Windoze. Do we simply toss out Linux as an option because we could do the same on Windows? Do we simply toss out TRON as an option because we could do the same with Linux?
Yes, in everwhere but Japan, we'll probably never touch TRON and its family. It's all in Japanese, built by Japanese engineers for Japanese people. Which isn't to day localization to English and other languages can't be done, but with all the competition, I can't see Ken-san thinking an English version of BTRON is the most important thing for the TRON world right now. Which is a shame- BTRON is a pretty sweet system, MicroScript beating the pants off of shell scripting any day.
A bunch of things run this OS. Like mentioned in the article, a lot of embedded systems- cameras, phones, appliances, cars, etc. But, TRON and BTRON also power desktop computers and PDAs. The BrainPad TiPo is the only PDA I know of which runs *TRON, but there is probably others.
http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/btronproducts.html
enjoy...