Embedded GNU/Linux

drawing the big-picture

Embedded GNU/Linux has become a serious offering for industrial applications, but is it only stability and performance that make it suitable for management to consider it as a serious alternative to proprietary solutions ?

In this article an outline of what makes GNU/Linux valuable for industrial applications is given, needless to say it can't be complete, as it would be easy to fill the requested six pages with references to successful projects in industry alone! This article will try to draw up the big-picture of embedded GNU/Linux and embedded real-time Linux. The intent is to show that GNU/Linux is more than just a stable operating system - it is a complete system of development tools, architecture specific facilities, debugging and testing and last but not least source and project management software and services, the sum of these offerings is the strength of GNU/Linux, a fast evolving technological pool that is based on the strength of the underlying open-source idea.

So what are the show stoppers for embedded GNU/Linux in the industrial applications field ? In this article we contrast the big-picture of embedded GNU/Linux by pinpointing some of the key issues that we belive the projects management fails to understand, preventing the successful introduction of GNU/Linux in many areas.

Referent:

Nicholas Mc Guire
http://www.realtimelinuxfoundation.org