Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, of ZDNet News, writes . . .

“Hot on the heels of the unveilings of Transmeta Corp.'s Mobile Linux and Lineo Inc.'s Embedix, Red Hat Inc. is joining the embedded-system fray with its Red Hat Tools for Embedded Developers (RHTED). RHTED is an open-source integrated development environment (IDE) for software developers. It uses any Linux operating system to develop embedded Linux programs for most computing devices.”

“Such developer tools will enable programmers to port existing Linux applications to Linux-powered embedded devices. The tools, themselves open-source, should greatly expand the ability of Linux programmers to easily and quickly move into embedded-system development . . .”

“The product, which includes installation support via e-mail, is expected to start shipping March 1 at a list price of $599. Why is Red Hat doing this? After all, in addition to Lineo and Transmeta, young, eager companies such as MontaVista Software Inc., Zentropix Computing LLC and more than a dozen others already are shipping their own real-time, embedded Linuxes. The reason is as old as business: money . . .”

Embedded consortium in the works

“Regardless of how well RHTED does in the marketplace, there are already other attempts afoot to make sure the embedded Linuxes don't stray too far from their common base code.”

“The founder of LinuxDevices.com, a Web site devoted to embedded Linux, is leading an effort to form a nonprofit embedded Linux consortium. The fledgling group has the backing of players like Lineo, Lynx Real-Time Systems, MontaVista and Zentropix. If the association does, indeed, gel, it probably will use one of Zentropix's domain names, www.embedded-linux.org. The group will meet for the first time March 1 during the Embedded Systems Conference in Chicago. Top of the issue agenda? Linux interoperability.”

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