uclinux or windows ce?

Hi,

I'm about to develop software for controlling a domotic system. The hardware should have a small lcd touchscreen (approx. 7 inches). The software displays some light bulbs. When you press on it, the light will be switched on or off and the screen will be updated.

My question is. I don't know which OS I should choose. My first impression tells me to choose Windows CE because it has a GUI build in and it has a much better development environment. But on the other side, linux is known for his (her?) stability and lot of free tools and compilers.

Please, be as objective as possible. It's not my intention to start a flame war!

Reply to
Robben Mario
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Hallo Mario,

"Robben Mario" schrieb in news:MhwQb.3430$ snipped-for-privacy@phobos.telenet-ops.be:

Take a linux kernel, compile Xfree and use Java. That works fine.

Regards, Kurt

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Kurt Harders
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Reply to
Kurt Harders

In comp.os.linux.embedded the answer is obvoiusly one : linux

Reply to
Helix

The platform you're going to run on is also an issue. uclinux can run on much leaner platforms than Windows CE.

Your application seems very, very simple. Why do you want to use a heavy (in embedded terms) OS at all?

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Reply to
Alex Pavloff

There are _several_ for Linux :-) BTW do you mean GUI build of the kernel or of the application?

for kernel (2.6) - Alternate configuration commands are: "make menuconfig" Text based color menus, radiolists & dialogs. "make xconfig" X windows (Qt) based configuration tool. "make gconfig" X windows (Gtk) based configuration tool. "make oldconfig" Default all questions based on the contents of your existing ./.config file.

for applications Qt Designer kylix (Borland) ...

Linux has several graphical application development environments too :-)

kdeveloper (not only KDE applications!) eclipse (primary Java, C, C++, even for Windows) kylix emacs :->

...

But you had not investigated the available tools much...

There are even more since you accept to pay for your IDE

CodeWarrior Most distributions contains IDEs for embedded Linux development.

/RogerL

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Roger Larsson
Skellefteå
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Reply to
Roger Larsson

Really. Wince isn't an embedded operating system at all! As late as 1990, there wasn't any hardware under a few hundred thousand dollars with enough horsepower to wade through wince's bloat. Maybe a cray ymp couldn't provide adequate performance, but not much less.

Any "operating system" that barely runs on a 100 mips machine isn't qualified to be called an embedded operating system by any stretch of the imagination.

Reply to
TCS

You'll want to consider cost and cost of support. As far as I know, and I could be wrong, you need to buy a minimum number of wince licenses, so your startup costs can be quite high. I'm not up-to-date with their licensing, but it's something you'll want to look into.

Wince is primarily supported by proprietry third party companies, and that will cost you money as well. You can also buy third party support for Linux, but there is also a large Linux community were the free exchange of help is the norm. The Linux model is to share information, the Microsoft model is to find ways to make money from it.

I believe that Linux is becoming the defacto standard for embedded operating systems. That's a good reason to go with it.

Dan

Reply to
Dan

The major advantage of Embedded Linux: It is fully compliant with it's dektop "brother". You will find it easy to adapt it for your special hardware requirements if it they not already supported. As with WindowsCE you will have to be involved in licensing issues with Microsoft (which you will also have with commercial EmbeddedLinux distributions) and finding solutions for porting problems can be an expensive support issue. Standard Linux software can be easily brought to the target device without hazzle and adaptions so the number of usable libraries is huge.

WindowsCE, afaik, does not come with a GUI per default. If you are looking for a sophisticated Linux based GUI you might want to take a glance at Opie

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which should provide you with everything you need for your specific purpose. As far as development environments are concerned, it is very convenient to be able to use a standard C++ IDE (like kdevelop), build and test the apps on your desktop and then cross compile the software for the target platform with a common gcc. If you are familiar with UNIX/Linux development you will find it comprehensive.

Oliver

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Oliver Fels
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Oliver Fels

Why are you limiting your choice to those two? You can look at other stuff like Green Hill Integrity as well. If you can afford WinCE; you can probably afford a dual buffer LCD controller which using simple bitblt operations should do the job without bloated OS

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Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson   ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com
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Reply to
Ulf Samuelsson

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