MontaVista Inc. laid claim to producing the industry's first mass-distributed embedded Linux CD, as 138,000 copies of a CD titled “Hard Hat Linux, Journeyman Edition” shipped within shrink-wrapped copies of the June edition of EDN Magazine. The special distribution of MontaVista's embedded Linux Cross Development Kit were included as a supplement to the magazine's June cover story, entitled “Linux strafes… the embedded landscape” (see story). The article details how mainstream Linux functionality and ubiquitous 32-bit CPU technology are challenging the status quo in embedded systems design.

“When EDN selected MontaVista to provide a companion Linux CD for the June issue, MontaVista put together a team of engineering, QA, and marketing staffers to meet the challenge — to provide 138,000 copies of a functional, easy-to-use embedded Linux demonstration and distribution,” relates Jim Ready, embedded industry pioneer and MontaVista CEO/president. “The Hard Hat Linux Journeyman Edition, produced in under 45 days, features fully-functional cross development kits for embedded Linux, targeting Intel x86 and PowerPC processors from desktop Linux and Windows host platforms.”

The Journeyman CD also includes documentation and cross development demos that produce bootable diskettes and binary images to highlight cross development, the Microwindows GUI, the MontaVista real-time scheduler, and fully functional embedded Linux systems on embedded PC platforms and on the Embedded Planet PowerPC processor-based RPXlite board.

 
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