Having used OpenEmbedded for a number of Embedded Linux projects over the past 5 years, it is interesting watching new users come on board. The most recent announcement came from Koan that the KaeilOS distribution will be joining the OpenEmbedded project. In the announcement, they summed up my thoughts well:
We at KOAN wanted to avoid waste of energy converging KOAN efforts into a stable and solid Open Source project like OE is.
“Avoid waste of energy” — isn’t this what OSS is all about? Life is way too short to re-invent every wheel. Considering OpenEmbedded has dozens of active contributors, it would be very difficult for any one company to replicate the functionality of OpenEmbedded. Although there are many ways to build embedded Linux distributions, and some tools do some things better than OE, there still does not seem to be any other embedded Linux build tool that fulfills the following requirements as well as OE:
- build from scratch on any x86 Linux system
- large number of contributors
- large number of packages
- support a large number of architectures
- Can modify images and integrate custom applications in a consistent way as part of the build system, and not a post processing hack.
- Open Source
Some other companies using OpenEmbedded include:
- TI
- AMD
- Intel (was OpenedHand)
- Gumstix
- Bug Labs
- OpenMoko
- Atmel
- Techsol
- Compulab
- Toradex
- 4G-Systems
- Dream Multimedia TV
- M&N Solutions
- emQbit
- Siemens
- Embedded Alley
- and the list goes on …. (If you are using OpenEmbedded, please add your name to this list.)
I’m looking forward to seeing the KaeilOS improvements such as mdev, and boot time improvements.
Ironically KaeiliOS needlessly forked Ångström, which is “waste of energy” in my book. But time will tell how it evolves.
@ Koen
This is the first step forward as we continue to converge many industrial hardware systems to OpenEmbedded thanks to KaeilOS.
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