[ILUG] How much is Linux used?

[Brian Foster]

  | Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 01:42:38 +0100 (IST)
  | From: Paul Jakma <paul at clubi.ie>
  | 
  | On Mon, 8 Aug 2005, Brian Foster wrote:
  | >  | Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 01:04:01 +0100 (IST)
  | >  | From: Paul Jakma <paul at clubi.ie>
  | >  |  And it not making inroads into embedded RTOS market.
  |                                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  | > NO.  and about Linux not making inroads into the small-memory
  | > and/or hard-realtime embedded market.  those are important
  |          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  | I missed small-memory, but I think I covered the RTOS bit.

 NO.  you missed the >>>> HARD-REALTIME <<<< bit.

 “RTO/S” perhaps should, but does not, imply hard-
 realtime.  the soft-realtime of POSIX (which Linux
 does have) is sufficient for people to call Linux
 an RTO/S.  and it can be, and is, embedded.  what
 it does not have is deterministic behaviour of a
 hard-realtime system.

  | Is small memory that important anymore even?

 one project the company I currently work for is
 involved in at the current time is a HDTV with
 8KiB RAM and 2MiB of FLASH.  'nuff said.

 RAM prices are volatile.  for CE (customer
 electronics) devices, this matters:  CE is
 notoriously price-sensitive (with smaller
 margins than you might think, except, perhaps,
 at the high-end / early-adaptor).  a "large"
 exposure to volatile (unpredictable) RAM
 prices is therefore an issue.  however, what
 I have no idea about is the actual extent to
 which this price volatility determines/limits
 the amount of RAM in a CE device.

 the price-sensitivity is (probably?) one reason
 Linux is seeing design wins in CE.

  | Does it even matter what OS exactly it is as long as it's Free and
  | suitable for the task?

 no, it does not matter.
 but the question was about Linux.

cheers!
	-blf-
-- 
Experienced (20+ yrs) kernel/software Eng: | Brian Foster   Montpellier,
 • Unix, embedded, &tc;  • Linux;  • doc;  | blf at utvinternet.ie   FRANCE
 • IDL, automated testing, process, &tc.   |  Stop E$$o (ExxonMobile)!
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