Introduction

Developing embedded systems with Linux can sometimes be a slow and painful task, especially for a beginner. The major Linux distributions want to fill up your hard drive with software you won't need on a small embeddable system, and the small freely downloadable “Linux-on-a-floppy” type distro's seem to be customized for specific applications like network routers. Starting with either one and trying to make it into something that contains only the bare functions you need for your embedded device can mean weeks of trial and error.

In the third edition of LabVIEW Graphical Programming (McGraw-Hill, New York, 2001, by Gary W. Johnson and Richard Jennings; ISBN 0-07-137001-3), Gary Johnson and I try to eliminate some of the pain and confusion by giving you simple tools and step by step solutions to easily build embedded Linux devices. The book's main focus is the LabVIEW programming language, but in this third edition we have added a section introducing real-time and embedded Linux.

Included with the book is a bootable CD-ROM with the tools you need to build your own embedded Linux systems. The tools on this CD-ROM and the step by step instructions are just as useful if you are building standalone or networked devices using LabVIEW or any other language. I realize that many of you reading this article may not be LabVIEW programmers, some of you may not even know what LabVIEW is. That's OK, because for the curious I've included a section on LabVIEW. However, the main focus of this article is to introduce you to the embedded Linux tools and development methods used in the book.

I hope you're able to take away some ideas from this article that you can use in your development efforts. If you end up wanting to buy a copy of the book, that's OK too ;-)

• Part 1: Introduction
  
• Part 2: What is LabVIEW?
  
• Part 3: Why use a desktop OS to build an embedded system?
  
• Part 4: Getting to know VMware
  
• Part 5: Six steps to Building an Embedded Linux System
  
• Part 6: Deploying on the hardware
  
• Part 7: Conclusion

 
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