It has been a very interesting year looking out the window at the embedded Linux scene. I see total mainstream adoption as a clear and present trend. I base this off of “man-on-the-street” conversations with acquaintances. I was at a training conference on a non-technical topic. Asked what MontaVista did I gave my non-technical explanation. Quick as anything the person replies… “oh, embedded Linux. Yes, our engineers use that.”

Linux and the importance it has to technology product companies is now common awareness. That means something significant.

I’ve also seen a strong trend in recognition that the compelling problems of today are well outside the realm of just kernels, toolchains, and booting. The profound increase in potential software capability that open source brings to bear on new products has its one set of challenges. You can do media, office applications, advanced networking, wireless networking, power management, etc… but making choices and integration are far more challenging.

We’ve been able to help many of our clients to fabricate compelling products using a whole range of technologies north of the kernel. We’ll have some fun time discussing these in the coming months, I hope.

So since the action just starts at the kernel let’s take a moment to plug some upcoming conferences where you can explore these issues:

• Linux Plumbers Conference, September 17th-19th in Portland, OR: If you’ve ever been to the Ottawa Linux Symposium then I imagine this will be like that… just with a focus on all of the interfaces that bridge the kernel/userspace/application divide.
• MontaVista’s own Vision 2008 conference, October 1-3rd in San Francisco, CA: We had 400 attendees from 13 countries attend last year on this inaugural event. If you’re focus is on commercial product creation using Linux then this is a great even to network, learn, and brainstorm at.
• DESIGN & ELEKTRONIK Entwicklerforum, Oct 15, 2008 in Stuttgart: I had not heard of this conference before but there are a number of interesting presentations scheduled including two of from my fine colleague, Klaas van Gend and Ned Miljevic.
• Embedded Linux Conference Europe, November 6-7th in Ede, The Netherlands: One of the big dogs of the annual embedded Linux conferences. The Klaas & Ned show is making an appearance here as well.

So there you go… blow your annual travel budget out and make them all!

If you can only pick one then pick Vision 2008.

Brad

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 10:46 am and is filed under Uncategorized.