The following, in no particular order, is a list of vendors and consultancies for embedded Linux and a summary of what the companies provide. The Linux market is both dynamic and growing there are likely to be additions and updates.
Wind River is what's called the incumbent vendor in marketing speak. Wind River has been in the embedded business since before Linux existed and has a business built on delivering everything necessary for embedded development. In this case, “everything” means software, training, services, legal advice for open source, professional services, development tools for Linux, as well as the company's other embedded operating system, VxWorks. Wind River's Linux business model consists of supplying a version of Linux and the root file system that have been thoroughly tested and verified for the target boards, along with packages for supporting use cases like consumer electronics and industrial control. Wind River's strong suit is its development tools: Workbench. Workbench is a soup-to-nuts development environment that has excellent debugging and system-building tools to help with development. To provide a Linux distribution that's been tested and validated, the distributions from Wind River usually run a year or so behind the head of line development of the kernel or patches. But not all projects need the latest Linux. Wind River's product offerings are the most expensive of the lot. For budget-constrained companies, the pricing may take this company out of the running, the value of the services notwithstanding. Because Linux competes with Wind River's closed source VxWorks operating system, the company has had a mixed view of Linux and open source, to the point of running a “seven levels of open source hell” campaign complete with gargoyles. Over the years, Wind River has warmed to Linux, but it's still viewed as a secondary offering to VxWorks.
MontaVista's Linux operating system started as Hard Hat Linux that offered realtime performance. The company has branched out into serving the general embedded Linux market and has extended its product offerings through the addition of an IDE and other tools. MontaVista's value proposition is around delivering a well-tested Linux distribution paired with support and tools. MontaVista has two targeted distributions: one for carrier grade for telecommunications applications, and the other Mobilinux for handsets. The company also markets a general-purpose Linux distribution, Professional Edition. Unlike Wind River, MontaVista's focus is entirely on embedded Linux, and the company has embraced open source from its inception. The company regularly contributes to the Linux kernel (and, using number of changes contributed as a metric, is one of the top contributors to the Linux kernel project) and other open source initiatives, such as power management and special-purpose file systems. Although the software offered by MontaVista may lag behind that of the general Linux community by a year to 18 months so it can be tested and validated, the company has proven that it's always working on the next version of Linux for its customers. A transaction with the company involves purchasing a subscription that gives you the right to a certain number of software updates, the use of tools, and support during the length of the engagement. During the sales process, it's typical for MontaVista to sell services and training as well.
Embedded Alley is a Linux consultancy house that supplies customers with a mix of off-the-shelf software and services. The typical engagement with Embedded Alley begins with an interview during which the company finds out what you need; it then produces the software that matches your requirements along with support and training services. Embedded Alley doesn't offer IDE tools like MontaVista or Wind River. Instead, the company expects that customers will use open source tools for their development process.
DENX is a Linux consultancy based in Germany that does business worldwide and focuses on PowerPC architecture. The company's deep knowledge in kernel engineering for emerging hardware means that people seek out DENX for hardware-related development. The company got its start by doing boot loader work, creating a widely used boot loader for embedded systems called U-Boot. Getting a boot loader up and running on a system is a tricky bit of engineering that's essential to making the board able to run an operating system. In addition to creating the boot loader, DENX also does the early boot-time work necessary to get Linux running after the boot loader hands execution off to the kernel. This deep knowledge of the Linux kernel means that DENX distributions frequently support new hardware sooner that what's available in the general Linux kernel. DENX isn't withholding code from the open source community; rather, it takes time for a patch to wend its way through the process for inclusion in the main Linux kernel. Unlike many companies, DENX makes available its commercial product through the Embedded Linux Development Kit (ELDK). The ELDK is a remarkably complete embedded Linux distribution that includes a root file system, kernel, and tool chain. Because DENX is focused on PowerPC, the company's web site lists only PowerPC processors as supported; however, there are builds that aren't officially supported by DENX for other architectures.
Free Electrons started as a Linux training house by providing some of the best training materials freely available for embedded Linux engineers. The company has since branched out into providing embedded Linux consulting and training, along the lines of Embedded Alley. With its training heritage, Free Electrons focuses on helping its customers be good embedded Linux engineers, providing additional services where necessary. Free Electrons is very aggressive about making material and development work available to the open source community. Most of the training materials offered by the company are available for download free of charge. The materials include slides with comments and lab practice sessions. This wealth of information is offered without registration, which is refreshing and relieves you from using a throwaway e-mail address and fake phone number. Another interesting service that Free Electrons offers is taking the changes that your company may have made to Linux and supporting projects and getting them in shape for submission into the main development projects. Getting changes into the mainline of projects means that code will be supported with future releases of the software, so you won't have to figure out how to get patches to apply when the base software has updated. This reduces the time and efforts involved in keeping patches synchronized with the larger open source community.
Code Sourcery's genesis was writing the low-level code to get toolchains running for new hardware architectures. Hardware vendors contracted with this company to create or patch GCC and GDB so that it would work with the new features offered by these processors. Several other commercial embedded Linux vendors use Code Sourcery toolchains in their product offerings; most don't reveal this information, and Code Sourcery is tightlipped about its customer list. Branching out from toolchains, this company offers an IDE based on Eclipse that works with its toolchains and debuggers. But Code Sourcery remains focused on toolchains and doesn't offer the complete line of services and products that other companies do. If all you require of a vendor is a toolchain, then this company has the right product.
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1. Explanation of the Embedded Linux development process
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