LinuxDevices.com Embedded Linux Newsletter -- January 25, 2001


Welcome to the LinuxDevices.com
Embedded Linux Newsletter
January 25, 2001

by Rick Lehrbaum -- Executive Editor
ZDNet's LinuxDevices.com


*** FEATURE ARTICLES ***

LinuxDevices.com launches *supported* technical Q&A forum! -- Linuxdevices.com is pleased to announce the launch of the Embedded Linux industry's first fully supported Embedded and Real-time Linux Technical Q&A Forum. The free technical support service is staffed by a team of volunteers from the world's leading embedded and real-time Linux companies. Find out more about this exciting new service here: story

What's so good about open source and Linux -- in embedded? -- Rick Lehrbaum takes a close look at the data gathered in last year's Embedded Linux Market Survey and discovers some fascinating results. story

*** OTHER NEWS ***

ELC offers members booth space at sold-out ESC -- Over 120 companies are wait-listed for exhibit space at the upcoming sold-out Embedded Systems Conference scheduled for April 9 -13. But members of the Embedded Linux Consortium can still secure space in the Consortium's ESC pavilion if they act quickly. story

AMD chips fuel new Linux supercomputer -- John G. Spooner, editor of ZDNet News, reports that the University of Delaware's new Linux supercomputer, purchased with a $500,000 NSF grant and dubbed 'Samson,' is expected to rank within the top 200 fastest supercomputers in the world. story

ADSL chipset and home networking platform use Linux -- Agere Systems (a former subsidiary of Lucent Technologies) introduced a new ADSL chip-set for residential gateway, home networking, and computing applications that includes software for Linux based operation. A third-party reference design is also available from Ucentric Systems. story

Embedded browser option added to Hard Hat Linux -- MontaVista Software announced an alliance with Access Co. (Japan) whereby the two companies will pursue joint development and marketing activities. Access' NetFront embedded browser targets Internet appliances and other non-desktop applications. story

Lineo announces a trio of Embedix SDK advancements -- Lineo unveiled three advancements to its Embedix (Embedded Linux) SDK: a joint development system with Metrowerks, availability of the Embedix Reflective Memory solution, and availability of the Japanese version of Embedix SDK. story

New CDROM-sized PowerPC/Linux network appliance -- Total Impact announced a PowerPC based network appliance computer called the briQ. The Linux-based device is the size as a standard 5.25-inch disk drive (photo included). story

Red Hat to launch "Embedded Platform Partner" program -- Red Hat's Embedded Linux program appears to be getting ready to move into a higher gear later this month, with the planned launch of a new program -- the "Embedded Platform Partner" program. story

BluePoint to develop Linux-based PDA operating system -- BluePoint Linux Software has disclosed an agreement with Launch Computer Co. (Shenzhen, China) under which BluePoint will develop a Linux-based "PDA Operating System" based on BluePoint's Embedded Linux OS. story

Motorola Computer Group's HA Linux wins two awards -- Motorola Computer Group's Advanced High Availability Software for Linux ("HA Linux") was awarded "Product of the Year" by both Internet Telephony Magazine and Communication Solutions Magazine. story

Lineo adds IPSec support to NETtel VPN routers -- Lineo announced that its software engineers have completed a major enhancement to the company's NETtel family of Internet security appliance platforms, by adding strong VPN support based upon the IPSec standard. What's IPSec? Read about it here: story

Microsoft CEO says Linux is the #1 threat to Windows -- Microsoft's president and CEO (Steve Ballmer) recently stated publicly that he considers Linux to be his company's #1 problem. A TechWeb article contains a juicy quote on this subject from Ballmer. story

New Korean Linux PDA to be speech enabled -- Conversay's speech recognition technology is being incorporated into a Linux PDA developed by two companies in Seoul, South Korea. The device is targeted to Koreans learning to speak and pronounce English. story

ETRAX 100LX Developer Boards now available -- Axis is now shipping the developer board for its new ETRAX 100LX system-on-chip. Because the new ETRAX SOC contains an MMU, products based on it can run standard Linux kernels instead of requiring uClinux. story

PocketLinux 1.0 supports resource constrained devices -- Transvirtual Technologies released PocketLinux Version 1.0, an application development/deployment environment for resource constrained computing devices. (Watch for a review of PocketLinux at LinuxDevices.com, soon.) story

Platform enables real-time & embedded apps development -- RedSonic unveiled Red-Kit, a Linux-based hardware/software platform for embedded system developers. Red-Kit comes pre-loaded on a set-top box style system, complete with all the necessary Linux software necessary to create either real-time or non real-time applications. story

New tool creates real-time & embedded Linux images -- RedSonic announced release of a target system image builder for real-time and non-real-time embedded Linux based systems, based on the company's RedIce real-time Linux. story

ESC San Francisco unveils conference program -- the conference opens on Monday, April 9 with a program of full day tutorials on a variety of topics including several classes and presentations on embedded Linux. story

*** LINKS OF THE WEEK ***

Vovida.org -- an open source communications community site -- a communications community site dedicated to providing a forum for open source software used in datacom and telecom environments. story

Open source licenses -- this area of the opensource.org website provides a convenient list of open source licenses, including GPL, LGPL, BSD, Artistic, Mozilla, Qt, . . . and many more. story

Trinux -- a ramdisk based small Linux distribution -- Trinux provides the power of Linux security tools without requiring a full-blown Linux install or the need to download, compile, and install a complete suite of security tools that are typically not found in mainstream distributions. story

Serial Terminal Linux -- if you want to use a laptop (or embedded computer) as a serial terminal to headless Linux servers, booting a whole distribution is rather inefficient. This mini-distribution just boots Linux into minicom. story

Ethernet Phone -- real-time Internet voice communications -- Ethernet Phone is Linux software which allows real-time point-to-point voice communications over the Internet. Both source code and binaries are available for free download. story

the Linux-Mobile-Guide -- the Linux-Mobile-Guide covers laptop-related Linux features, laptop hardware features, configurations for different (network) environments, and other mobile devices (such as PDAs and cell phones) including their Linux features. story

*** FREQUENTLY UPDATED QUICK REFERENCE GUIDES ***

*** THE 2001 EMBEDDED LINUX MARKET SURVEY ***

As part of our continuing efforts to support the rapidly growing Embedded Linux Market, we are pleased to announce the online 2001 Embedded Linux Market Survey. The survey, which is structured in three parts, asks developers of Linux-based embedded systems and intelligent devices to anonymously provide information about their applications, their embedded Linux OS requirements and preferences, and the perceived advantages and disadvantages of using Linux in embedded applications.

Note: Please participate in this new survey, even if you already did so in 2000. Thank you!

VOTE HERE!

*** VISIT THESE OTHER ZDNET LINUX RESOURCES ***

Missed a previous LinuxDevices.com Embedded Linux Weekly Newsletter?   No problem!   Read them here . . .

Jan 18, 2001,   Jan 11, 2001,   Jan 4, 2001,   Dec 28, 2000,   Dec 21, 2000

Want to subscribe, unsubscribe, change your address . . . ?    use this online tool

Be sure stop by LinuxDevices.com -- "the Embedded Linux Portal" -- for the latest news, articles, forums, products, companies, jobs, and buzz in the fast-moving "post-PC" world of Linux-based intelligent devices, Internet appliances, and embedded systems.

You can contact us here.