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"Love the dolphins," she advised him. "Write by W.A.S.T.E.."
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 16:20:32 +0200 (MEST)
From: Juergen Quade <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Embedding Linux Report ?
> Hello,
>
> I need to do a linux & embedded market report.
> sounds like:
>
> linux & embedded market.
> Projects.
> Successfull stories.
> Linux Vs CE
> Linux Vs Qnx
> Linux Vs Other...
> Linux & Time to Maket...
>
> May someone tell me his/her experience.
> Good starting point.
> Links.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Pierre David
>
I did a case study last autumn about linux in embedded systems.
There are a lot of companies out there using Linux and
Linux in embedded systems is today a multi million dollar
business (according to the results of my case study).
The number of projects is huge. There are well known
projects like the empeg car player and other
specific projects like network management systems,
talking books for blinds, fieldbus/ethernet gateways
or graphic rendering machines.
>From all responses I got, all projects had been successfully.
People said, that Linux was well suited for their
task, easy to use and their system was quickly
implemented. Most of them used a standard pc architecture,
and used a flashdisc as storage device for the kernel
and the system.
If you compare Linux versus other operating systems you find
a lot of advantages:
- it is completly free (no costs)
- it is available in source (no dependencies to the OS manufacturer)
- it offers a good development system
- it is very stable
- the kernel and the system are scalable, therefore resources needed are low
(compared to a desktop systems or Windows CE)
- it offers good network facilities (very good suited for router, gateways,
print servers and so on)!
- it offers professional and internet support
Especially Windows CE for example is (was?) not very well suited
for ethernet applications. It only supports the client parts of
most of the tcp/ip applications (for example there is (was?) no
PPP-server implementation for CE). Beside this, CE is very hard
to debug (the debug files seems to be so huge, that you can't
load them onto your embedded system). CE is - as Linux - no
realtime operating system.
The disadvantage to other RT-OS is the lack of realtime support
(ok, there is RT-Linux, but this does not cover every problem
you may face in your rt-application) and - as written above -
Linux needs more resources than a classical RT-OS (of course,
CE needs also more resources ...).
Take in mind that the development systems for classical
embedded operating systems are very expensive!
Linux & Time to market is a good point. Because you can develop your
embedded application on your desktop system you are very fast.
Linux is definitly a good choice for an embedded system, if
you do not have specific requirements.
If you need more or deeper information, don't hesitate to ask
me.
Juergen.
