“Several embedded OSes are racing to corner the mainstream
market. Among these contenders are multiple Linux offerings,
Microsoft’s Windows CE and Windows NT 4.0 Embedded, Sun’s JavaOS,
Symbian’s EPOC and Palm’s PalmOS. …while PalmOS has cornered
the handheld market, embedded Linux is popping up just about
everywhere else.”
“For solutions providers, the message is clear: If you’re
working with network appliances and mobile devices, you’d better
familiarize yourself with embedded Linux. … Of course, an
operating system is useless without widespread developer support.
Here, Linux stands to benefit because hundreds of thousands of
programmers are familiar with C, C++, Python or PERL on Unix or
Linux. These gurus can start writing embedded Linux code
today.”
“Another plus for Linux is its flexibility. Applications written
for one platform (say, a Pentium III with 64MB of RAM), can be
easily transported to an embedded chip with 8MB of RAM. The same
doesn’t hold true for Microsoft’s embedded alternatives, Windows CE
and NT Embedded.”