Before the 2.6.25 merge window closed... [LWN.net]

Before the 2.6.25 merge window closed...

Posted Feb 25, 2008 21:48 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: Before the 2.6.25 merge window closed... by arafel
Parent article: Before the 2.6.25 merge window closed...

Wow. Embedded systems have surely grown since I did anything with them. 
Can you really call a system 'embedded' if it has the 128Mb+ RAM 
practically needed to compile a kernel these days? (If you don't have 
swap, like many embedded systems, make that 256Mb.)

If it has that much RAM, you could probably stick Perl on it without 
hardly noticing, at least on your development box.

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Before the 2.6.25 merge window closed...

Posted Feb 26, 2008 11:42 UTC (Tue) by arafel (subscriber, #18557) [Link]

Like I said, it depends on your definition of embedded, I guess. I work with set-top boxes,
which most people tend to regard as embedded. I suppose you could start to define it by the
amount of RAM and CPU power available. :-)

I'd notice putting Perl on it, but that's because I'd have to build it first. Python doesn't
seem to like cross-compiling for mipsel; no idea if Perl is better.

(For what it's worth, the dev system here has both 256Mb and an attached hard disk I could use
for swap if needed. Production boards can be differently configured, though.)

Oh - I wasn't actually commenting on the Perl dependency for the kernel build, btw, just the
view of embedded systems.