Linux in consumer electronics

Posted Oct 11, 2007 6:12 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413)
In reply to: Linux in consumer electronics by felixfix
Parent article: Linux in consumer electronics

From my experience working at a proprietary OS vendor, the driving factors were:

1 - desire for source code access on its own terms
2 - the way projects come about, buying a package to build something doesn't work for projects that sort of accidentally emerge
3 - wanting complete control over their projects, whether or not they have the skills to make that a reality
4 - seeing linux as a way to cut costs from continuing to maintain their existing home-grown OS (this was the majority of the market not ten years ago)
5 - ability to fix bugs that crop up

A lot of these are similar/overlapping ideas but they're different sorts of decision making processes that get you there. Proprietary platforms really were never competitive in terms of market share to the make-it-ourselves mindset.

What the proprietary vendors had were superior centralization of management, a broader driver market, superior development tools, and .. *sometimes* focused technology for niche areas. Linux defeats the first two outright, and tools vendors can easily sell stuff for developing on Linux. It's only the niche technology stuff that would still have you using something else.

Well, that and targets that are "too small" to run linux. No one's rearing to run linux on a 16bit microcontroller.

At least, that's my perspective.

Linux in consumer electronics

Posted Oct 11, 2007 9:04 UTC (Thu) by alex (subscriber, #1355) [Link] (1 responses)

Linux has pretty good driver support. Certainly for any mid-sized project (for example embedded systems with mini-PCI buses) it makes choosing devices easy if they have a Linux driver. Sure Windriver would write a network driver or a SCSI driver for vxWorks but we would pay a lot for it and if we wanted to switch devices in a later design we would have to pay again.

Linux in consumer electronics

Posted Oct 11, 2007 18:35 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

It seems my choice of phrasing was not clear enough, here it is with an addition:

What the proprietary vendors had -- in comparison to completely home-grown solutions -- were superior centralization of management, a broader driver market, superior development tools, and .. *sometimes* focused technology for niche areas.