“Intelligent dedicated systems and appliances used in interface, monitoring, communications, and control applications increasingly demand the services of a sophisticated, state-of-the-art operating system. Many such systems require advanced capabilities like: high resolution and user-friendly graphical user interfaces (GUIs); TCP/IP connectivity; substitution of reliable (and low power) flash memory solid… state disk for conventional disk drives; support for 32-bit ultra-high-speed CPUs; the use of large memory arrays; and seemingly infinite capacity storage devices including CD-ROMs and hard disks.”

“This is not the stuff of yesteryear's “standalone” code, “roll-your-own” kernels, or “plain old DOS”. No, those days are gone — forever!”

“Here's the quandary: general purpose desktop OSes (like Windows) aren't well suited to the unique needs of appliance-like embedded systems. However, commercial RTOSes, while designed to satisfy the reliability and configuration flexibility requirements of embedded applications, are increasingly less desirable due to their lack of standardization and their inability to keep pace with the rapid evolution of technology.”

“What's a developer to do? Fortunately, a new and exciting alternative has emerged: open-source Linux . . .”

This whitepaper, by LinuxDevices.com founder Rick Lehrbaum, explores the requirements of a wide range of embedded systems — from factory automation to handheld internet appliances — and points the way to Linux based solutions.

* Read full whitepaper *

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.