Salt Lake City, UT — (press release excerpt) — this Monday, Century Embedded Technologies will announce the release of the PIXIL Operating Environment (OE) platform for embedded devices running Linux to the open source community. Source code is available under both a commercial license and the open source GPL license. PIXIL OE provides a standard platform for smart Internet-enabled devices which delivers a standard set of elements for wireless communications, networking, web browsing, power management, and GUIs.

PIXIL OE serves as the base platform for Century's PIXIL PDA and PIXIL Thin Client solutions, targeting commercial PDAs, thin clients, webpads, and information appliances. PIXIL offers a fully integrated architecture based on open standards and eliminates the costly and time consuming need to combine individual components into one integrated solution. PIXIL can run on a variety of operating systems as well as graphical windowing environments.

With a unique combination of internal design capabilities, device drivers, software development and management tools, PIXIL OE 1.0 offers a platform based on reliable open source Linux projects including Microwindows, a custom version of the FLTK Applications Framework (Fast Light Toolkit), Screentop Applications Manager, and the ViewML Internet browser.

Microwindows brings the features of modern graphical windowing systems to embedded devices with minimal disk and RAM requirements. Linux framebuffer devices are fully supported and new device drivers are easily introduced. An enhanced of version of FLTK for Microwindows provides a modern look and feel for PDAs. The Screentop Applications Manager offers screentop and window management integrated with handwriting recognition and onscreen keyboard functionality for all applications. The ViewML browser is a lightweight, small footprint and fully functional web browser with a runtime memory requirement of less than 2.5 Mb.

Additional applications are a clock, terminal emulator, and games including Doom. PIXIL-based solutions for thin clients and PDAs are available now from Century with commercial support. Featured bundled software components include a commercial PIM suite, graphical wireless network and system configuration, and remote Windows applications access.

For those desiring a base platform supplied without in-house development resources, a PIXIL OE Certified Platform is available, supplied as a bootable system image with source, certified for a given Linux platform for a fixed fee. The Certified Platform provides free bug fixes and support for six months after initial deployment. Deployment licenses are priced based on volume.

 
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