Linux PC models multiply as Vista struggles, Jan 15, 2008

Until recently, Linux PCs were about as easy to find in stores as a vinyl record. Now, personal computers with the Linux operating system pre-installed are becoming more readily available, thanks to new models from upstarts and established PC makers -- and disappointment with Microsoft's new Windows Vista OS.

About half the embedded systems engineers that read EE Times Europe, are planning to use Linux as an embedded operating system, according to respondents to a poll.

Mobile Linux momentum is growing with an increasing support for Linux as a cellular OS from a broad cross-section of the handset industry.

MontaVista Software Inc. last week announced the beta release of an integrated development environment (IDE), code-named Project Tsuki, that promises full compatibility with the Eclipse framework. It supports the MontaVista Linux operating system with new analysis features aimed at simplifying embedded Linux development.

Only 17 percent of embedded systems designers are currently using embedded Linux, and 66 percent say they are either not interested in using it or do not expect to be using it anytime soon, according to the results of a survey released here Monday (April 3) at the Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley.

Microsoft employees writing to an anonymous blog are calling for the heads of high-level company executives -- including Steve Ballmer and Jim Allchin -- after the double delay debacle this week when the Redmond, Wash. developer shoved its two most profitable products into 2007.

Highlighting the growing popularity of the Linux operating system among designers, Xilinx Inc. has for the first time included Linux support on its free, downloadable development system.

More than 5.6 million copies of the Firefox 1.0 stand-alone browser have been downloaded in the first two weeks of its release, the Mozilla Foundation said this week.

Linux is being used to run mission-critical applications in large companies, not just providing infrastructure services, according to a recent study by Forrester Research. Some 53 percent of 140 companies surveyed by Forrester are running mission-critical applications on Linux, and 52 percent choose Linux for new applications, Forrester said in an April 26 study, "Linux Crosses Into Mission-Critical Apps."

Some 44 percent of respondents said they are using Linux to port older applications to new hardware, and 33 percent run applications that require Linux.

The trend to adopt real-time versions of embedded Linux got a boost last week, when aircraft engine builder Pratt & Whitney revealed that it used a Linux-based software kernel to test its new F135 engine, which will power the U.S. military's Joint Strike Fighter aircraft.

Following an announcement of the engine's first test run to full afterburner power last Monday (Feb. 2), Pratt & Whitney engineers said Linux, long considered ill-suited to real-time applications, played a key role in highly deterministic, real-time tests. They said that a Linux-based product known as RTLinuxPro served in the development and testing of software for the engine's full-authority digital electronic control, as well as handling "facility control" of test stands at the company's West Palm Beach, Fla., engine plant.

The next problem in creating an instrument was to design an electronic platform that could make use of the samples, and to develop tone-generation and postprocessing applications that could turn the samples back into voices, singing out in response to an organist's fingers and feet. Since “neither of us was a hardware person,” Ogletree said, the partners and their growing team of developers turned to off-the-shelf hardware rather than custom DSP design. Upon investigation, the group concluded that a personal computer — or perhaps a linked network of PCs — with existing professional-grade sound cards could do the work.

So the team set out to develop tone-generation software running on a stock PC. Windows was quickly rejected as unreliable, and development was done on the Linux operating system. Following the death of James Murray — the key algorithm and software developer, himself an organist — new software designers joined the project, which by now was taking on a life of its own within the company. And then came the 9/11 attacks.

The SCO Group said Tuesday (August 5) it wants $32 for each embedded system using Linux. That request stems from the Lindon, Utah company's claim that Linux versions 2.4 and above contains code that infringes on its Unix software.

A decision by eight consumer giants, most of them Japanese, to throw their support behind Linux has the chief executive officer of SCO Group on the move. Darl McBride, whose company recently launched a legal attack on Linux for alleged patent infringements, will go to Japan this week in an attempt to prove his point with some of the manufacturers that came together last week as the CE Linux Forum (CELF).

Five Japanese TV manufacturers will form a working group to hammer out technical specifications by October for digital TVs with Internet access.

As a result of the joint effort, the working group is expected to adopt Linux as the operating system for its TV-Internet connection specification.

Looking to narrow the gap in features between Windows- and Linux-based platforms, CodeWeavers Inc. has developed a series of browser plug-ins such as Shockwave and QuickTime for Linux-based Internet appliances.

Aldec Inc., a longtime provider of FPGA design tools, will make its first foray into the ASIC market this week with Riviera, a Linux-based mixed-language simulator. Riviera simulates VHDL, Verilog and EDIF and comes with an HDL editor and source-level debugger.

At PC Expo in New York next week, ZF Linux Devices (Palo Alto, Calif.) will introduce what it calls the first PC system-on-a-chip.

Silicon Graphics Inc. got behind the Linux operating system in a big way on Monday (May 15), introducing a line of Intel-based workstations that will support Linux, and saying it will drop all development work on proprietary operating systems except for its high-end IRIX systems.