Chapter 1: Starting Out
You are about to begin working on your next project, and this time it is going to be running Linux. What should you think about before you put finger to keyboard? Let's begin with a high-level look at embedded Linux and see why it is popular, what are the implications of open source licenses, and what kind of hardware you will need to run Linux.
Linux first became a viable choice for embedded devices around 1999. That was when Axis (https://www.axis.com) released their first Linux-powered network camera and TiVo (https://business.tivo.com) their first Digital Video Recorder (DVR). Since 1999, Linux has become ever more popular, to the point that today it is the operating system of choice for many classes of product. In 2021, there were over two billion devices running Linux. That includes a large number of smartphones running Android, which uses a Linux kernel, and hundreds of millions of set-top boxes, smart TVs, and Wi-Fi routers, not to mention a very diverse range of devices such as vehicle diagnostics, weighing scales, industrial devices, and medical monitoring units that ship in smaller volumes.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- Choosing Linux
- When not to choose Linux
- Meeting the players
- Moving through the project life cycle
- Navigating open source
- Selecting hardware for embedded Linux
- Obtaining the hardware for this book
- Provisioning your development environment