Free News Alerts by Keyword
Interested in embedded technology? Are you an engineer or designer? e-clips helps you follow the latest news on key topics like multicore, FPGAs, 8051, ESL, PC/104 and more!

e-clips news alerts by keyword

by jason mcdonald, senior editor | read other blog posts

Embedded Linux primers and tutorials. Everyone is looking to get started quickly and easily with Linux for embedded and real-time systems. Beyond primers, tutorials, and overviews, this blog post also identifies some of the better new books on Linux for embedded and real-time systems. Beyond doing it yourself, you can search eg3.com for Linux.

contents of this post:

1. embedded linux primers
2. embedded linux books
3. embedded linux webinars
4. feedback - read it
5. feedback - give it

embedded linux primers

In the old days, people used to 'do it themselves' in the RTOS (real-time operating system) business. Now, more and more people are turning to Linux as an alternative to building your own RTOS. Linux can be daunting, however, and most people do not just turn to kernel.org and get started. Fortunately, there are some good primers and tutorials available on the Internet, not to mention a few good books.

The obvious place to start, if you are new to embedded Linux or starting a new project, is Wikipedia / Embedded Linux. With all the usual caveats about Wikipedia, that site does a nice job overviewing the basic issues involved. You can also check out our RTOS-Report , which has a special section on embedded Linux, including survey data. Many of the engineers surveyed indicated that licensing issues were some of their most pressing concerns.

Embedded Linux Wiki is also a good starting point on Linux information. Finally a rather old, but useful, overview is the Introduction to Linux for Real-Time Control. This report is directed to control engineers and managers. It is intended to provide an overview of real-time operating systems and particularly of the real-time modications to the Linux operating system in enough detail that the reader can make an informed decision whether to commit the resources to evaluate Linux as a real-time operating system.

You can find all these overviews on our Embedded Linux Coverage .

embedded linux books

The open source community bills itself as very much a user-friendly, helpful, community. This may be so in terms of newsgroup postings and conferences, but the lack of Linux tutorials and overviews is actually rather astounding. Human nature doesn't change just because of open source, and the relative lack of embedded Linux overviews or tutorials is compensated by the huge diversity of available books on the topic. For sale, as they say, but who said that free and open source were the same thing?

Among books, there are some good new ones out for 2009. First and foremost, I'd recommend purchasing Embedded Linux Primer: A Practical Real-World Approach (2nd Edition). According to Amazon, "This book brings together indispensable knowledge for building efficient, high-value, Linux-based embedded products: information that has never been assembled in one place before. Drawing on years of experience as an embedded Linux consultant and field application engineer, Christopher Hallinan offers solutions for the specific technical issues you’re most likely to face, demonstrates how to build an effective embedded Linux environment, and..." It's in the Second Edition, so that in and of itself is a good sign.

A second forthcoming book is, Pro Linux Embedded Systems. Amazon summarizes this book as "Today, Linux is included with nearly every embedded platform. Embedded developers can take a more modern route and spend more time tuning Linux and taking advantage of open source code to build more robust, feature-rich applications. While Gene Sally does not neglect porting Linux to new hardware, modern embedded hardware is more sophisticated than ever: most systems include the capabilities found on desktop systems. This book is written.." I haven't actually seen this book, so I can't say for certain how useful it will be!

A final useful book is Embedded Linux Development Using Eclipse. Published in 2008, this book leverages the Open Source Eclips environment for Linux applications. Development tools can be a hassle with embedded Linux, and this guide can orient you to the best practices available when using Linux. Eclipse is covered by eg3.com, here . Click on this link to find all our books on embedded Linux .

embedded linux webinars

Webinars are a great way to educate yourself on Linux for embedded systems. eg3.com has one coming up: Linux in the Embedded Systems Market . If you miss the live version, it will be archived for a period of one year. It aims to answer these sorts of questions:

What are the factors for designing in Linux? What types of industries and applications is Linux targeted for? What's the migration path in the use of Linux? Which Linux distributions are being used? Join VDC Research as they present a subset of their annual 'Embedded Software Survey.' If you are using Linux, might use Linux, or are just curious about the Linux phenomenon, this is an excellent webinar for you

Beyond that webinar, eg3.com also tracks the available universe of webinars on embedded Linux. Here is a list of recent ones:

• Tough Times, Tough Choices:Maximizing Device Software ROI with Open Source
• Using MontaVista Linux on Intel Atom for the broader embedded Market
• Embedded Operating Systems: Real Time, Linux and Windows
• Streamlining the embedded Linux development process with MontaVista Linux 6
• Building a Bluetooth-enabled home automation device on the Atmel SAM9263 with LinuxLink 3.0
• Addressing the Top 5 Pains in Linux System Build and Design
• Using Linux for Devices: A Guide to Software Developers and Managers
• Linux on the Freescale MPC8349E PowerQUICC II Pro Family of Processors

You can track all these Linux webinars by signing up for e-clips , our news alert service by keyword (just choose Linux). Or, you can view the list, on demand, here .

feedback - read it:

feedback - give it:

	submit feedback to this blog post your name: your company (optional): your e-mail (optional): (Email will not be published!) please type your comment below, and hit send: IMPORTANT: to prevent spam, please re-type the letters that you read in this graphic: * graphic says:

Express Logic develops, markets and supports the ThreadX® real-time operating system (RTOS), NetX™ TCP/IP networking stack, USBX™ USB stack, and FileX® embedded file system, and PrismX™ GUI toolkit for embedded applications. ThreadX is a royalty-free, full source code, small-footprint, low-overhead RTOS that is extremely easy to learn and use. ThreadX is one of the most widely deployed RTOS products in the world, with over 800 million products based on ThreadX.