Overall assessment

I'm not sure what to make of Red Hat's strategy in releasing the Embedded Linux Developer Suite at this time. It has an unfinished feel, obvious to even the most casual user. The user interface reminds me of some quick-and-dirty GUIs I've written myself to meet temporary internal needs, rather than a professional user interface intended for customers. Some might consider this acceptable if the process were well documented, so at least users could understand the work flow and devise a strategy to solve their application needs. But the documentation is curiously useless. It fails to explain the development model Red Hat uses, contains gaping holes in the process, and is written in a barely decipherable style.

Perhaps Red Hat has accomplished wonderful things somewhere behind the unsatisfactory user experience I've focused on. For example, reportedly ELDS contains a first rate library minimization tool. But I haven't found it, nor is it documented; so I have no way of knowing whether it can benefit me as a user.

An Embedded Linux toolkit vendor faces a job quite different from that of an open source project leader. The latter can “scratch an itch”, as Eric Raymond says, focusing on some specific interesting task and letting others fill in the gaps. But a toolkit vendor must provide a complete user experience to compete with the more established RTOS vendors for busy customers. RTOS users simply want the OS to do its job and get out of the way so they can focus on application development. Providing some whiz-bang feature won't impress these users if they must struggle through weeks of learning curve to get their applications running.

These principles are especially true for an Embedded Linux toolkit, which after all has Linux itself behind it. Users choosing Linux for their target want to be able to run Linux applications, since otherwise some specialized RTOS will meet their needs. The back end of the toolkit had better not “improve” on Linux too much, or compatibility will be broken. This places still greater emphasis on the front end as the one of the most important areas for a toolkit to differentiate itself. It therefore surprises me that Red Hat has chosen to give the front end so little effort.

— The end —

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Story navigation . . .

• Part 1: Toolkit strategies
  
• Part 2: Configuring the system
  
• Part 3: Building target images for three SBCs
  
• Part 4: Overall assessment

Be sure to read all the articles in this series . . .

• A developer's review of the leading Embedded Linux toolkits
  
• A developer's review of Lineo's Embedix SDK
  
• A developer's review of MontaVista's Hard Hat Linux SDK
  
• A developer's review of Red Hat's Embedded Linux Developer Suite
  
• A developer's review of LynuxWorks' BlueCat Linux SDK
  
• A developer's review of REDSonic's RED-Builder Embedded Linux toolkit

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About the author: Jerry Epplin has written embedded software for the past fifteen years, primarily for medical devices. He can be reached at [email protected]

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Other related stories . . .

• The Embedded Linux Overview Quick Reference Guide
  
• The Embedded Linux Distributions Quick Reference Guide
  
• The Real-time Linux Software Quick Reference Guide
  
• The Embedded Linux GUI/Windowing Quick Reference Guide
  
• Book review: John Lombardo's Embedded Linux
  
• Embedded Linux Workshop — an open source embedded Linux toolkit

 
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