Very Specialized Distro


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I'm wondering, is there any very specialized distro for embedded purposes, ex. robots?

I could always take an existing distro and turn it on its head and rewrite half of it, but I'm wondering is there anything like this?

It would be nice if it were capable of running X, but not neccesary.

It would need to have a good set of device drivers (ex. USB periphrals) as well (though I'll be writing a lot of my own, as well)

And should have lots of support for doing 'funky things' with serial ports, etc.

The system itself will have sufficient memory, and hard disk space to run even 'modern' distros, so It doesn't need heavy support for running in like 4 MB of RAM or whatever :)

Anyone know one?

Otherwise, I'll be stripping a slackware down and writing a lot.

And I'll release more information on my robotics project as it progresses :)

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I don't think that any embedded distro that supports robots would run X.

You are probably looking for a RTOS, and there are Real-Time versions of Linux.

I, it so happens, happen to be a Robotics Engineer at Saturn (the car company, not the planet, of course). It may be interesting for you to note that we have two different manufacturer's models of robots in production there. These are large, industrial machines -- not the stuff you see from MIT where they incorporate some AI-like algorighms for decision-making capabilities.

Anyhow, one brand uses a proprietary Operating System to run the robot. The other uses VxWorks for the robot, and uses Windows 95 (I kid you not!) for the GUI. The GUI is (of course) not time-critical, and is used prmarily for offline programming or for manual decisions needed by our tradesmen when there is a fault that requires a set of eyeballs to determine the correct course of action.

I have thought how cool it would be to replace that Windows GUI front-end with a Linux one... I guess it's the "zealot" in me trying to break free. :no:

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I know I was looking for a RTOS, was just wondering If any supported X....

Guess not :)

No matter, i happen to like the shell interface.... its veeerry sexy.... :laugh: :rolleyes:

edit: Gheezes, win95..... good lord.....

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