Browsing the internet you stumble upon a lot of cool things and some of the cool electronics things I have come across involve small development boards that cost about $30 and can run a full Linux operating system on them. I thought this was a pretty cool thing. It allows for you to hookup a keyboard, mouse, and a monitor and acts as a small mini computer. I knew Linux was very versatile in its platform support but I never knew exactly how versatile it was until I found our about the Raspberry Pi.
http://www.raspberrypi.org
The Raspberry Pi is a full fledged GNU/Linux box that costs only $30. While Raspberry Pi has its own flavor of Linux that it runs with its own desktop environment and GUI, people have been able to actually compile and run Ubuntu on this device. I think this right here shows how deeply integrated and adaptable the Linux operating system is for it to be able to run on such a small device with such limited resources.
With ARM processors becoming cheaper and cheaper, I think having such a real time operating system able to run on them really opens new horizon’s for embedded devices. I think that being able to successfully run Linux on embedded systems with the help of ARM processors is going to be the next big thing in embedded electronics. While highly technological devices are becoming “smart” now days, this will allow “dumb” devices to also become smart by having a real time operating system at their hearts. For example, we have smartphones and smart TV’s, but imagine having smart remotes, and smart lights. All of these controls and systems can be equipped with a Linux operating system and achieve farm more than they currently do.
Apart from this, I am also excited to try compiling Linux on my smartphone and new tablet I will be getting soon. Ubuntu 12 has support for running on ARM so I wanted to set it up and run it on my smartphone so that I can boot into it and use my phone as a fully capable computer with an operating system that has a desktop environment. I am really excited to see where this Linux on ARM technology will take the electronics world in the coming years.