Consumer Electronics Industry: Linux is the Future 263
securitas writes "The New York Times is carrying a Reuters story about Linux as the software of choice for consumer electronics. At the world's largest consumer electronics show, the IFA trade fair 'the first Linux products are already on show and more will come soon, companies said.' The reason? Linux is freely available, widely embraced and profit margins in the consumer electronics business are one or two percent at best. The math is simple. The industry push comes from the members of the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF), that includes Sony, Philips, Matsushita/Panasonic, Hitachi, Sharp, Samsung, NEC, IBM, LG, Thomson/RCA and
Toshiba. The CELF was previously discussed on Slashdot. Mirrors at Silicon.com and CNet News."
Close! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Close! (Score:2)
Why Linux instead of BSD? If it were me, I'd be concerned that GPL would require me to release some part, or maybe all, of the special code written for the embedded device. I don't want to get into a GPL debate, just assume that someone wasn't careful and did write their code in such a way that it was deamed to be covered under the GPL.
Why take that chance, why not use BSD instead?
Re:Close! (Score:2)
Re:Close! (Score:2)
You bet its the present! One of my previous jobs was building controlers from camera pan/tilt systems. We figured we could value add by getting Axis's dev kits and building from there(the side benifit getting mjpeg digitisation). Mine Gott! it was good. Being able to just shopping car
Re:Close!-Biz Opportunity? (Score:2)
Re:Close!-Biz Opportunity?-II (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Close! (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft's mistake was insisting on "NT everywhere", i.e. that the same OS architecture should work for huge parallel servers and for SOHO routers. W
Re:Close! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is very much like the post I would have liked to have written. While I was reading it though, I started to think about the future, which is kind of fun because you can make shit up. One thing I didn't make up though is that a friend of mine once told me that people would ru
Re:Close! (Score:2)
Good news (Score:5, Insightful)
I just hope all these corporation continue to respect GPL and not find a way to tear Linux apart. Just a little caution needed after what happened to UNIX.
Re:Good news (Score:4, Insightful)
While it's nice to say that Linux runs these devices, I would also like to see that fucking code get into the kernel somehow.
The reason Linux is as good as it is is because of the community. Linux programmers made the kernel the way it is OPENLY.
These companies are going to use what has already been developed and then they aren't going to continue adding those features to the kernel to be worked on by others.
Again, I am glad to see Linux is running these things, but I would prefer that Linux be made better openly by these companies embracing it.
Re:Good news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good news (Score:2)
Re:Good news (Score:3, Insightful)
My point is that unless these companies are making interesting architectural changes to the kernel, or otherwise improving it in a way that more than just a few people care about, what difference does it make if they release their changes or not?
Re:Good news (Score:2, Insightful)
What are those reasons? The ability to get a great product for low cost, the ability to change that product, and the ability to distribute the modified product.
A company that makes a device, such as a robot, isn't in the operating system business. Even if the extensions that allow Linux to ru
Re:Good news (Score:3, Funny)
If they ship the software as part of their hardware, they have to make the source available.
Re:Good news (Score:2)
No, they can't. That option is only available under Section (3c) of the GPL, and it doesn't apply to commercial entities.
If they modify the Linux kernel, or any other LGPL/GPL software, they have to make the modified source available, period.
They don't have to make the source available for any software that doesn't link with GPL'ed code, and that is they way the GPL was intended to work.
And if enough people whine an
Re:Good news (Score:2)
Did you even read what I wrote? It is your assertion that they can just "point to the source" that is wrong. If they ship a Linux kernel, even unmodified, they must make the source to that kernel available. That matters because while they may not have modified the code, someone upstream may have, and because it lets users run the kernel on that hardware.
And there's nice func
Re:Good news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good news (Score:2)
No. The truth is most people don't even read the licence, and wouldn't care what it said if they did.
They'd have the same attitude that they do to copying CDs, or speeding - "sure, *technically* it's illegal, but what're the chances of getting caught? And besides, they can't lock everyone up, can they?"
Linux will only replace Windows on the desktop when it's better in ways that end users care about, and all they
Re:No, practical issues are the main barrier. (Score:2)
1) Does anyone that buys a Tivo or a Sharp Zaurus, which use Linux underneath, have to install the software? No, of course not. These are specific use devices, not desktop or laptop computers.
2) Again, these devices have rather specific uses, and so the company will write the required applications for them. This is a non-issue.
And if their code isn't part of the kernel? (Score:2)
stop worrying (Score:2)
If companies wanted to "tear Linux apart", why would they get together in the CELF? The main point of using Linux is to get a market in which programmers and tools can be shared among many projects and companies. If companies wanted their own proprietary embedded operating systems, they wouldn't have to take Linux and hack it up, they could just keep using whatever they are already using.
If some companies e
Re:Good news (Score:2)
Math (Score:5, Funny)
Linux is freely available... The math is simple.
SCO-math aside...
Good to hear, though. I've been happy with my little Linux-based MP3 player for years now.
Re:Math (Score:2)
Re:Math (Score:2)
Re:Math (Score:3, Funny)
How about a URL?
Re:Math (Score:3, Funny)
A SCO Xenix based MP3 player with a +$699 price tag with constant rebooting, freezing, and disk corruption sounds pretty good for me right now.
Re:Math (Score:2)
The real point of this comment, though, is to comment on the stability of Xenix, which is extreme. I had a crappy ol' 286 and Xenix upon it, and it never ever crashed. Not even a little bit. I used it as my exclusive machine for quite some time, while I was still in the learning phase of using Unix. (I mean, you're always learning, but
Re:Math (Score:2)
Re:Math (Score:2)
It's a shame that companies only seem to like it because it's free. It's better than the alternatives for a lot of reasons, and only one of them is the price.
Hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
So I treat this as the ultimate victory for Linux. The next generation of computers is wireless and mobile and trying to keep everything secure. Firmware Operating Systems is the solution; hail the next coming of a great era, the wireless/linux revolution!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
Nikon Coolpix 775 upgraded from 1.3 to 1.4 via firmware.bin available on nikonusa.com
Garmin e-Trex Vista upgraded (frequently) from www.garminusa.com
Compaq iPaq 3635 OS upgraded in 2002 to the latest available at the time...
Looks like it is already being done. Why would it change?
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
Most likely the program would be put on an EPROM (Eraseable Programmable Read Only Memory) or better yet an EEPROM (Electrical EPROM), and not just a regular ROM. Remember ROM doesn't mean you can't write to it, it is used to differentiate from RAM (Random Access Memory) where you can randomly read and write to any location in memory. EPROMs and EEPROMs require all of the memory to be erased at once, and all of the memory to be written at once, wich would be ideal for an OS, IMHO.
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
QNX (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean sure devices like Tivo which can download patches from the server once a week may not really care, but what about something that's stuck with whatever OS it leaves the factory with...
Is linux really "there" yet?
Re:QNX (Score:2)
Just take some linux baseline, develop your device with it, test it well and ship it. Since dedicated devices use only a fraction of Linux functionality, it is possible to thoroughly test and make the chance for required patches very small.
Re:QNX (Score:2)
IIRC QNX is strictly an intel based OS. While super-reliable, it is not portable.
Re:QNX (Score:2)
Re:QNX (Score:3, Informative)
The QNX Neutrino RTOS supports numerous processors from the x86/Pentium, PowerPC, ARM, StrongARM, XScale, MIPS, and SH-4 processor families. In addition, the QNX Momentics development suite provides board-support packages for a large variety of reference boards.
QNX(R) Neutrino(R) RTOS FAQs [qnx.com]
Re:QNX (Score:3, Insightful)
Compared with rolling your own distribution of Linux that has only the features you want in the hardware you send out, with a one time charge for the development tools if you choose to use them, and you can see that there is a large potential for savings.
Quick back of the message c
Re:QNX (Score:2)
Man, you REALLY need to take sex ed again.
Hey, if he wants to spore ... (Score:2)
Disquieting, obviously. But what isn't?
Smart Vibrators? (Score:3, Funny)
That's too much information for me...
Re:Smart Vibrators? (Score:2)
Didn't realize Linux finally has a joystick driver!
Re:Smart Vibrators? (Score:2)
Interesting (Score:2)
What I find interesting is that many of these companies are selling consumer electronics that use OTHER OSes than Linux. So, what exactly does this context mean when they call Linux "the operating system of choice" ?
Re:Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
I would considder this is to be quite a big step and it's quite remarkable that so many companies share this idea. It takes quite an effort to get so many big companies in line and therefore may be part of some long term strategy.
The Computer Scientist and the Engineer (Score:5, Funny)
Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. "What do you think this is?"
One advisor, an engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster," he said. The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?" The engineer replied, "Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype."
The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years.
"With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard- boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelet classes.
"The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, 'Cook yourself.' The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs.
"Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too.
"We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message 'Booting UNIX v.8.3' appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook.
"Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel Pentium with 16MB of memory, a 300MB hard disk, and a SVGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap. (Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a four-bit microcontroller!)."
The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after.
Re:The Computer Scientist and the Engineer (Score:2)
Sorry, but that's probably an industrial programmer/analyst, not a computer scientist. Object oriented programming ceased being at the cutting edge of computer science many years ago.
Re:The Computer Scientist and the Engineer (Score:2)
Perhaps you don't understand that the piece is an allegory, rather than a description of a real event. For an allegory, the job title is all that matters since it compares the profession of "engineer" with the profession of "computer scientist".
The engineer, meanwhile, has the code for the 4-bit microcontroller locked down, all the QA testing has been done, and the first-release mask programmed parts are due back from Hitachi next Tuesday.
Yes, and gi
Re:The Computer Scientist and the Engineer (Score:2)
Whoops. We're right back up to the allegory again.
Quite correct: I am making a point about engineers in general. If all you have is an engineering education, you shouldn't be writing software because you really don't know what you are doing.
How about you go over there and write some specifications and fancy documentation while we finish the code. You can use all your latest 'scientific' methods to produce test cases for the QA people to use
Re:The Computer Scientist and the Engineer (Score:2)
Seriously though, how many of you imagined a SCO monkey standing at the door writing down company names (Sony, Philips, Matsushita/Panasonic, Hitachi, Sharp, Samsung, NEC, IBM, LG, Thomson/RCA and Toshiba as mentioned above) to put on their "to sue" list?
Perhaps they will attempt to use their wonderful SMP capabilities to sue in parallel. I want a front row seat for the backlash when SCO's computers, telephones, PDAs, microwave ovens, VCRs and ot
Re:The Computer Scientist and the Engineer (Score:2)
And the success is... (Score:2)
Nice possibilities... (Score:2)
Out of the box one can just use it as a receiver, but once you connect it to your LAN (ethernet) you can browse its contents using SMB (it runs SAMBA) or a web browser. You can edit its configuration files using "vi" over telnet, you can NFS-mount a disk on another system and record movies on it, plug in a USB memory key and
Re:Nice possibilities... (Score:2)
Hmm... You seem to think people don't own what they buy. If manufacturers think they can win market share through lock-in rather th
Re:Nice possibilities... (Score:2)
I already said: "beyond what one can be reasonably expected to do with something you own".
Re:Nice possibilities... (Score:2)
Perhaps we're thinking of different examples. Personally, I can't think of a single instance where someone bought a device, went home, took it apart and did something truly harmful to the manufacturer with it. Well, aside from review it and publicize the fact it was a piece of crap, but that's protected speech.
So, for me, the "expected limit" would be. Well... there is no limit. What is it I *shouldn't* do with something I buy that isn't already illegal in
Economics trumps ideology (Score:2, Interesting)
I believe.. (Score:3, Funny)
This Linux thing is just a fad.
Show them all ... (Score:2)
Give them a sense of pride... (Score:2)
Let the children's laughter remind us ... (Score:2)
Cover them with BBQ sauce! (Score:2)
Children. It's what's for dinner!
just wait till next year (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure I've seen this article many many times over the past several years. Linux zealots are starting to sound like Red Sox fans.
Re:just wait till next year (Score:2)
Summary of Events So Far (Score:5, Funny)
If people think the techno world is boring, they should take another look. Some of this stuff really does make "Dilbert" look better than real life.
And then... (Score:2)
Unix is the future of computing. (Score:2)
Talk about Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
He fires up the burner - a standalone device with a reader for every digital cam storage medium and a built-in burner and... yes.. its a linux boot sequence and the touch-screen app ran on X. This thing needs drivers for a lot of exotic stuff and was up within 15 seconds.
Quit
Profit margins (Score:2)
Re:Profit margins (Score:2)
What would your homebrew equipment cost if you had to pay yourself a wage at reasonable market value?
Another Linux market... (Score:4, Interesting)
- A large hospital will have hundreds if not thousands of computer terminals. Linux could significantly reduce hospital overhead costs, which nowadays is being given a high priority.
- Linux doesn't currently have the virus/worm problem that Windows has. This is majorly problematic for Windows in the healthcare industry where almost any informatics downtime is unacceptable. Healthcare informatics is rapidly turning into a mission-critical enterprise as more and more hospitals depend on their computer systems to deliver information.
- There's no reason healthcare workers couldn't use the StarOffice/OpenOffice Suites for applications. Most users' needs are pretty basic and documents regarding patients are supposed to be held strictly confidential as well.
- Which brings me to the one downside. Few medical informatics applications are written for Linux. Those that have been are open-source and are developed very slowly since very few programmers out there know anything about (or care to know anything about) healthcare informatics application requirements.
Re:Another Linux market... (Score:2)
Which brings me to the one downside. Few medical informatics applications are written for Linux. Those that have been are open-source and are developed very slowly since very few programmers out there know anything about (or care to know anything about) healthcare informatics application requirements
The only way to correct this is to demand it from the vendors. They'll be sure to bitch and moan, and attempt to label those demanding it as irelevant hippie wackos. But their competitor that then does it
Re:Makes no sense (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Makes no sense (Score:5, Funny)
They better be! I like to make at least two pieces of toast at a time.
Re:Makes no sense (Score:2)
Re:Makes no sense (Score:2)
Re:Makes no sense (Score:2)
No, it's free, under the GPL, until SCO proves otherwise in a court of law.
Of course, if you pay your protection money on time, the SCO goon- excuse me, lawyers - won't have to break your leg- I mean, take you to court.
Re:Makes no sense (Score:4, Funny)
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:Makes no sense (Score:2)
Not all of them [geocities.com].
Would you like some toast?
Re:For those who don't want to subscribe - the tex (Score:3, Informative)
Fe Fi Fo Fum I smell the blood of a troller dumb (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:what's with all the links? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:what's with all the links? (Score:2)
Re:what's with all the links? (Score:2)
Somehow I think slashdot readers are smart enough to find Sony, Philips, Matsushita, Panasonic, Hitachi, Sharp, Samsung, NEC, IBM, LG, Thomson, RCA, or Toshiba websites without the useless plethora of links.
Darn Skippy! Some of us use lynx after all. That's a lot of down-arrows to get to 'Read More.' Damn GUI-using muttermuttermutter.
Already been done.... (Score:2)
Jingle all the way (Score:2)
Anyway I prefer "Penguin Inside"
Not "lost", ... (Score:2)
That's the new way of doing things.
Re:Well, I'll feel a lot safer (Score:2)
Re:Thanks (Score:2)
I am so glad the poster helpfully pointed out the URL for IBM Corp.
Perhaps he thought that the list of names including IBM may give those blood-sucking fu^H^H^H^Hpeople at SCO pause for thought. A mighty force they make presented together like that...
Re:FreeBSD Embedded (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus, you're not as likely to hear about products that embed one of the BSD OSes, as there's no reason for the company to disclose they're using a BSD.
There's lots of embedded NetBSD out there.
Re:Is it a really good thing? (Score:2)
Don't like them making money off of your wiork, don't release your work under the GPL.
Re:Why embedded Linux? (Score:2)