ELC: Trends in embedded Linux

Henry Kingman, editor of LinuxDevices, opened the Embedded Linux Conference with a look at the trends in embedded development since he started covering the subject in 1999. Based largely on the annual surveys run by LinuxDevices, his keynote speech highlighted the growth of Linux as an embedded operating system as well as where it is headed in the next few years.

The conference, which started April 15 in Mountain View, California, gathers around 175 embedded developers for three days of talks on a wide variety of embedded topics. Sponsored by the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF), the conference has become the premier technical conference for the ever-growing embedded Linux community. Each day has a keynote, with kernel hacker Andrew Morton and CELF architecture group chair (and conference organizer) Tim Bird rounding those out, followed by a half-dozen presentations slots, with three parallel presentations.

Bird introduced Kingman as one of the main providers of news about embedded Linux, relating that LinuxDevices and LWN.net are his "two main sources of information" about the community. Bird marveled at the body of work that Kingman has amassed: "this guy is prolific". He also reminisced a bit about the early days of embedded Linux, starting with his days at Lineo to his current work at Sony:

Kingman acknowledged Bird's introduction, but said that he didn't know "if that makes me an expert in the forest, or lost in the trees". He looked back to a 1999 San Francisco Bay Linux Users Group meeting with Linus Torvalds as the featured speaker. Kingman said that Torvalds wanted Linux to be a desktop operating system but that he saw the embedded space as the big growth area.

Later that year, Kingman attended the first LinuxWorld conference where he saw some folks from Transmeta talking about squashfs and cramfs. An article he wrote about those filesystems was published by Rick Lehrbaum, founder of LinuxDevices. That was the first of more than 3000 articles Kingman has since written for LinuxDevices.

Kingman then presented the results of the most recent LinuxDevices reader survey. The survey gathers information about what LinuxDevices readers are doing or planning with regard to embedded Linux development. It has been run for eight years, providing some interesting information on changes in the readers' attitudes over the years.

Usage of Linux in embedded development projects crossed a threshold this year, with more than 50% of the 812 respondents saying that they are currently using it. Usage of Linux has been growing year over year, but didn't cross the halfway mark until 2008. More than 61% believed their company would be using Linux within the next two years.

The ARM family of processors has continued its growth with 30% of the readers using it, while 25% are using x86 variants. ARM overtook x86 three years ago; that trend looks to be continuing with respondents seeing 31% ARM versus 23% x86 over the next two years. Kingman said that he thinks Intel is trying to reverse that trend because spending on consumer devices is predicted to "outstrip IT spending".

There were a couple of questions asking where respondents obtain the version of Linux they use in their products. Ubuntu has a somewhat surprising share at 8%. For a relatively new distribution that is not specifically targeted at that market, it stands out, as does its predicted growth to 10% over the next two years. Kernel.org at 16% and Debian at 14% are the leading sources, with uClinux tied with Ubuntu and MontaVista and Fedora at 6% each.

Unsurprisingly, per-unit royalties were not popular with two-thirds of respondents being unwilling to pay those, but 60% were willing to pay for development and support of embedded Linux, so it is not just the free-beer aspect that is drawing companies to Linux. Most (45%) get their sources as a free download from a community site like kernel.org or handhelds.org, with 18% getting them bundled with their hardware. Only 11% said that cost was the greatest influence on their choice.

Legal threats are still on the minds of some, with copyright or patent concerns being considered a significant threat to roughly half of the respondents. SCO has fallen off the radar, with only 2.5% thinking that it is still a threat. "None of the above" was the big winner, presumably meaning that there are no significant threats, at 40%.

Kingman finished with a request of the embedded community to let him know what things should be covered in more depth and any additional areas they wish to see covered. He is looking for input on what the community wants to talk about: "we want to be your website."

While many things can be reduced to cost, cost is usually trumped by at least two other
factors: loss of job and loss of company.

Each decision has to be made by some individual person.  Remember the "noone got fired for
buying IBM" slogan?  It simply reflects that people don't mind costing the company more if it
saves themselves.

Loss of company trumps even that.  Bad business decisions can be camouflaged, some people have
a personal charisma that allows them to outlive many bad decisions in a company.  But no job
can outlive the company.  So when given a choice of saving the company $$$ with 99% success
rate, while the remaining 1% will break the company's neck, don't expect the savings to be
taken.

One exception is when the company is about to go bankrupt and not saving $$$ would kill the
company anyway.

You may be interested in the video that we took of Henry Kingman's presentation. All the
videos that we took are announced on http://free-electrons.com/news/news.2008-05-13