Palo Alto, California; Halloween, 1999 – Developers of embedded systems just gained a powerful means to locate the information and components they need for incorporating the highly popular Linux operating system into non-desktop applications. This new online embedded Linux resource center is called LinuxDevices.com. The site is the latest brain child of Rick Lehrbaum, well known in the embedded computer industry for his role in founding Ampro Computers Inc., the company that invented the highly popular PC/104 embedded PC standard.

According to LinuxDevices.com founder Lehrbaum, “we aim to be the global 'embedded Linux portal' – the first place you go on the Internet when you're looking for news, information, products, and links to embedded Linux resources.” “LinuxDevices.com also will be an active player in helping bring coherence to the sometimes fragmented Linux world,” adds Lehrbaum. The site will feature a broad spectrum of embedded-oriented Linux topics – including news, articles, events, links, jobs, polls, and an interactive forum – all exclusively focused on using Linux in embedded applications.

LinuxDevices.com will host up-to-date information about embedded Linux related single-board computers, chips, tools, and support, and will highlight commercial embedded Linux distributions – for example MontaVista's Hard Hat Linux, Lineo's Embedix, and Cygnus' EL/IX – as well as numerous real time and small footprint open source projects such as RTLinux, Small Linux, µLinux, LOAF (“Linux On A Floppy”), ELKS (Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset), etc.

Bryan Sparks, President and CEO of Lineo, Inc. (www.lineo.com) claims that the new portal satisfies a real need expressed by the industry's largest embedded hardware providers, saying “Lineo's major partners, including Motorola, have recently experienced a large increase in the number of OEMs and integrators seeking to develop Linux-based embedded devices. Many of them have communicated the need for a centralized repository for advancements, information, shared files, and employment opportunities related to embedded Linux. LinuxDevices.com will serve as a great resource to the many software and hardware vendors migrating to an embedded Linux base.”

Jim Ready, founder and CEO of MontaVista Software (www.mvista.com) welcomes the new embedded Linux portal, saying he's “pleased to see the arrival of a vendor-neutral resource on the web focused exclusively on embedded Linux and the development of its infrastructure.” According to Ready, “Lehrbaum is an ideal person to spearhead this effort, considering his highly successful past efforts creating and growing the PC/104 embedded computer standard into a mainstream and thriving industry.”

James Norton, CEO of Zentropic Computing (www.zentropix.com) points out that “the embedded board manufacturers and their downstream users represent a huge potential market for Linux and this portal (LinuxDevices.com) will provide an invaluable resource for this very diverse community and will become a crucial factor in helping them decide to migrate to Linux.” “I am very pleased that Rick Lehrbaum has made this commitment to support the industrialization of Linux,” concludes Norton.

 
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.