[ale] Linux vs XP Embedded

[Bob Toxen]

It depends on your Real-Time requirements.  Unless you have very short
latency requirements, either a 2.4 or 2.6 kernel will be fine.  XP
will crash far too many times for serious consideration.

Bob Toxen
bob at verysecurelinux.com               [Please use for email to me]
http://www.verysecurelinux.com        [Network&Linux/Unix security consulting]
http://www.realworldlinuxsecurity.com [My book:"Real World Linux Security 2/e"]
Quality Linux & UNIX security and SysAdmin & software consulting since 1990.

"Microsoft: Unsafe at any clock speed!"
   -- Bob Toxen 10/03/2002

On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 02:03:05AM -0500, Joe Knapka wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I've been given an interesting realtime control system to build, and
> my employer wants to evaluate both Linux (woohoo!) and Windows XP
> Embedded (bummer).  I know some of you have some embedded/realtime
> experience with Linux, so I'd like your opinions on this subject.  I
> can't say much about the application itself, except that it will be
> handling something in the neighborhood of 50Gbytes per day (that's a
> G) of IP and serial traffic, and must meet hard deadlines on the order
> of once per second (but a missed deadline won't kill anyone - this is
> not a medical or aviation application. We can probably even recover
> from a missed deadline, but that sort of thing should be kept to an
> absolute minimum).
> 
> I'm thinking that a 2.6-series kernel would be the way to go with
> this.  I understand 2.6 integrates the preemptive and low-latency
> patches, and that 2.6 can be built in a VM-less configuration so as to
> remove latency associated with demand paging.
> 
> Does anyone have any further suggestions or alternatives?  Also, is
> anyone here in a position to evaluate the relative strengths of Linux
> vs XP Embedded?  Personally I feel that the "Embedded" part of that
> name is probably pure marketing hype, but I could be wrong.  It is hard
> to see how Linux could possibly be a *worse* choice then XP in this
> domain, though.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -- Joe Knapka
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