20090623 Linux is Everywhere Despite Low VisibilityBranding
From s5h.net
Embedded Linux: Out of sight, out of mind
Embedded Linux devices fall into two categories: 1. Where the Linux OS is anonymous simply because it has been used by engineers as part of the tool set. For example branding of a flight data recorder would be weak. The buyers in a specialist market would buy based on specificaton, price and their own professional evaluation. 2. Where the Linux OS can do its job but not intrude on the heavy branding of its host device. For example TomTom, Motorola, Palm and Sony would have good market reasons not to compete with Microsoft branding. The don't wan't or need any interference from 'Microsoft Inside' stickers. So what follows this section it is just a list really, thinly disguised by a theme! Apologies, you may know it all already, but hopefully some sections will be as news to you as they were to me. Even with some kind of theme there were still eleven categories. Skip the bits you are familiar with.
http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?RSS&entryid=2284
Related: You're A Linux User/Supporter: You Just Don't Know It Yet
I'D like to start by asking you a series of seemingly unrelated questions. Have you watched Shrek or Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone? Have you flown on Continental, Virgin America or Singapore Airlines? Do you drive a BMW, Fiat or Renault car? Are you serving in the United States Army? Have you ever bought anything online using Paypal? Have you ever stayed in a Sheraton hotel? Or travelled by train in Canada?
http://www.raiden.net/?cat=2&aid=409
The hidden world of Linux
There are many great FOSS projects that utilise old PC hardware and give it a new lease of life. The best is desktop computing with various Linux distribution flavours like Mint, PCLinux, Ubuntu and countless others. In fact it is my considered belief that the best hardware to run Linux on is infact (almost) any machine that is at least 12 months old. It is possible, of course, to select components based on the degree (and maturity) of the specific support under Linux but this has two major drawbacks. [...] Not only do such projects look to modify embedded Linux devices, but some great projects have sprung up to utilise old PCs every household seems to accumulate in order to fulfil a number of key uses. For example, comprehensive firewall distributions like IPCop or Smoothwall or NAS distributions like FreeNAS (although this is based on BSD.) These are not dirty hacked operating systems either but very mature, streamlined, low memory footprint distributions which run headlessly. Being totally administered through a web browser makes these distributions feel extremely professional and polished (even if the archaic hardware they are running on doesn’t) this being coupled by the extraordinary amount of options present really makes these projects an extraordinary example of the flexibility of Linux/BSD.
http://whyamistilltyping.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/the-hidden-world-of-linux/
Linux everywhere
Take yesterday as a case in point. I checked the order status of my Elonex One, and sent an email to see if my order for the One can be upgraded to the One+ (bluetooth, and bigger internal memory). I then caught the train to the Queen Elizabeth hospital, watching the in-train tv which is powered by some Linux flavour (given the error message I saw a few weeks back). Visiting my friend Simon at the QE, he’s spotted that the tv/phone/internet screens that each patient has are powered by Linux. This is of course when he’s not tapping away on his Asus EEE, and hopefully writing the next Da Vinci Code (only better).
http://andyhollyhead.wordpress.com/2008/03/28/linux-everywhere/
Linux is truly everywhere
I spent a long time smiling about the Linux bootup screen that I had just seen. To begin with, it reminded me that Linux, and other open-source products, are now everywhere. Linux is no longer for the uber-geeks. It's not just for system administrators and programmers, either. Linux is now at the core of mainstream appliances, there even when you don't think that a computer or operating system might be involved. [...] Finally, Moore's Law and the general trend toward cheaper and faster hardware means that Linux now fits into even more places than it did before. We normally think of Linux as an operating system for servers, or even for desktop computers. But we can expect Linux to be at the heart of a growing number of appliances, from video-on-demand devices to digital video recorders (e.g., TiVo), to cellphones (e.g., Android and OpenMoko). The Linux-powered refrigerator, with a built-in bar-code scanner that can tell you how long ago you bought milk, isn't far behind.
http://ostatic.com/158401-blog/linux-is-truly-everywhere
What CAN’T Linux do?
1. The story mentioned above. A man installs Linux on sixteen Playstation 3s (with zero hardware modifications), clusters them together, and creates a system to simulate black holes. 2. Installing Linux on a Mac. I was just reading the most recent Wired magazine that has a good story on how Apple has created a very closed system where only Apple software plays on Apple hardware. Hello Yellow Dog Linux! I have run Linux on an iBook - it was sweet. 3. Routers. We all know that Linux works well on routers. OpenWRT installs well on many Linksys routers. [...] 11. Airplane black boxes. Montavista uses a Carrier Grade Linux to power in-flight recorders. 12. Brain surgery. Yep. This Linux-powered robot helps in brain surgery.
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