Embedded Systems

Embedded Systems

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  • Wolfgang Boos
    Wolfgang Boos
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    WinCE vs. Embedded Linux
    Hallo zusammen,

    gibt es einen objektiven Vergleich zwischen Linux und WinCE. Es gibt verschiedene Artikel, die entweder von Microsoft finanziert sind oder Ideologisch stark eingefärbt sind.
    Besonders von Interesse:
    Vor- Nachteile technisch gesehen
    Einarbeitungszeit
    Kostenbetrachtung

    Als Hardware soll ein PXA270/320 mit VGA-LCD eingesetzt werden. Hard-RT ist keine Anforderungen.

    Wäre euch dankbar wenn ihr ein paar Tipps habt.

    Grüsse
    Wolfgang Boos
    • 13 Jan 2009, 9:47 pm
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    Ravi Bhaskaruni
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    Re: WinCE vs. Embedded Linux
    Sorry donotunderstand this. If you can translate that will be better,
    • 14 Jan 2009, 5:35 pm
  • Wolfgang Boos
    Wolfgang Boos
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    Re^2: WinCE vs. Embedded Linux
    Hello,
    here my translation.
    does everybody know an objective comparison between Linux and WinCE? Their are many different articles in the web but either they are sponsored by Microsoft or they are "religious".
    I'm interested on:
    Advantage/Disadvantage
    Setup/Starttime for the developer
    Calculation of investment (IDE, Runtime etc.)

    Kind Regards
    Wolfgang

    Hardware is a PXA270/320 with VGA-LCD. No Hard-RT.
    • 15 Jan 2009, 9:41 pm
  • Phil Smith
    Phil Smith    Group moderator
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    Re^3: WinCE vs. Embedded Linux
    There is another alternative to WinCE and Linux embedded, its VXworks.
    See the Wiki for info. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VxWorks
    As for WinCE or Linux it would depend on what you are looking to achieve, but in
    general terms WinCE is well supported whereas with Linux you would need to
    have engineers who are fully familiar with the Linux OS.

    Phil
    • 09 Feb 2009, 03:15 am
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    Ravi Bhaskaruni
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    Re^4: WinCE vs. Embedded Linux
    Yes

    I definitely agree with Phil:)

    Wince has wide variety of flavors which u can configure, depends on what u are looking. More of u can spend less time in configuring at OS level. Linux, u need to be master :)

    Like building a house based on the "BUILD your own tool kit" --> Wince. Wince more RAD

    Linux, you need to learn how to build. Linux is more like, build from scratch. Need to master

    Please send e-mail , if u are looking to know more details?
    • 09 Feb 2009, 6:52 pm
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    Thilo Fromm
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    Re^3: WinCE vs. Embedded Linux
    What's better for you - Linux, CE, VxWorks, pSOS, whatnot - really depends on the tasks at hand, and your (financial and timeline) options available.

    Here's some random things with no respect to completeness and balance:

    That is, if you are going to build a device which needs full integration into a Microsoft Office Environment (Exchange push, office documents editing, etc.) you're certainly best off with WinCE - Microsoft protocols are closed, non-MS Implementations have basic feature sets at most, and people don't mind to reboot their device every now and then. You will have an application builder with a few choices for Apps to click togehter for your product, and you can write code against the rather not-so-full-featured WinCE libraries available. You will have fast time-to-market if Microsoft has foreseen your type of product, a horrible lot of work within a limited system otherwise. There will be bugs and glitches here an there because WinCE overally gives the impression of being not quite as well tested as, say, WinXP or Vista. And, that's true, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to build a CE product.


    If you're planning for an internet terminal, or a set top box, a VDR or similar system, on the other hand, linux would be a sane choice. You might want to check whether all the software components you need are readily available. These really are LOTS for linux; way more than WinCE has to offer. Basically you can integrate everything the open source world has to offer into your product. There are several Linux embedded Toolsets around (Openembedded, PTXDist, ...) which aim at different purposes and help you a lot in integrating applications and building Linux for embedded platforms. Finding applications and judging their quality, however, remains your job. With Linux it is less likely that you'll run into stability issues - if you or your developers know what they are doing. It is also much less of a pain concerning maintenance and adding new features - again, if the developers know their linux.


    So you see, it's really a matter of your goals, and your options ;)
    • 17 Feb 2009, 6:06 pm
  • Vitus Jensen
    Vitus Jensen    Premium Member
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    Re^4: WinCE vs. Embedded Linux
    There will be bugs and glitches here an there because WinCE overally gives
    the impression of being not quite as well tested as, say, WinXP or Vista. And,
    that's true, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to build a CE product.
    I can confirm the bugs and glitches :-(
    Building the image is easy, fixing or extending it might be difficult to impossible (if the "feature" is inside the code which isn't build automatically or not there at all).


    As for linux vs ce: even if you taken the wince code itself as bugfree there is still the issue of the Board Support Package. You get one for free/buy one from a hardware vendor or develop your own, but have to fix it yourself or bug the vendor. In linux most or all of the BSP would be open, used by others and can be freely discussed and shared. This could in theory lead to fast bug finding.

    Of course in linux you have the problem of a fast moving target which you should follow. This results in a different kind of problems, especially with private code.
    • 03 Mar 2009, 7:27 pm
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    Thilo Fromm
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    Re^5: WinCE vs. Embedded Linux
    Vitus Jensen wrote:

    As for linux vs ce: even if you taken the wince code itself as bugfree there is still the issue of the Board Support Package. You get one for free/buy one from a hardware vendor or develop your own, but have to fix it yourself or bug the vendor.
    This issue always exists with own designs. To be on the safe side you would select hardware not just by availability and price but by platform driver support as well. Otherwise you might just move cost from hardware to software development. However, with Linux you seem to have a broader choice of hardware today, because more and more drivers are provided directly by the vendors. There even is a chance to use vanilla kernel drivers - the ones using standard interfaces (PCI, PCI-X e.g.) are pretty platform independent, as weird as this might read.

    In linux most or all of the BSP would be open, used by others and can be freely discussed and shared. This could in theory lead to fast bug finding.
    I rather opt for widespread use of the platform. Linux system components (TCP stack, scheduler, ...) are serving in a huge amount of internet servers. So even odd bugs and issues are identified sooner or later. How many of your company web servers run WinCE?

    Of course in linux you have the problem of a fast moving target which you should follow. This results in a different kind of problems, especially with private code.
    That depends on your development process. If you're developing for rapidly changing markets it's not an issue,as you would have to be change-friendly anyway (doing SCRUM or Agile Development for example) to survive and prosper. Integrating updated code doesn't hurt and is part of your daily work then, and you can enjoy all the advantages of being up to date while handling the disadvantages routinely as a part of your process.

    Change is second nature to software development. If your development process doesn't embrace change (and you can only sleep in peace by considering only one "holy" software version for your project instead of following current development) I'd suggest the problem is with the process, not the software.
    • 04 Mar 2009, 07:30 am
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    Thilo Fromm
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    Re^6: WinCE vs. Embedded Linux
    [SDK wrote]

    So what about a 'professional linux', supported by a company, not only by the 'community'?? (Examples are the german company Sysgo -with ELinOS -, Emlix or Montavista - several products)
    This depends. If you want to outsource platform support completely and just care for (userspace) application development, then contracting a third party software development company for providing and maintaining platform support can be a good idea. They might also perform well in delivering specific drivers. You would pay for the service, not for a package then. There are many more companies available offering this kind of development services than the big ones you mentioned.

    However, I think it's bad practice to just buy one of their packages and hope that you can sleep in peace with that. You'd probably cheat yourself into thinking that with all the money spent you did your best to make your platform work, while instead you avoided to care about the problem at all.
    • 04 Mar 2009, 07:45 am