Fri, 25 Aug 2000 Ivan Martinez wrote:
> Hello all:
> I have to justify my decission of using RTLinux instead of another
> realtime operating system in my MSc project. Basically my reasons are
> the known advantages of Linux:
> - Popularity
Yep, minimal risk of you needing to maintain the OS yourself...(>)
> - Free software (we spent a lot of money in hardware so I couldn't
> sustain this very much if a censor points this out)
Well, when it comes to money, a more interesting point is "What happens if the
proprietary solution goes out of business, and we're forced to switch to
another one?"
That's when cost starts to get important; when you're in panic and you can't
work around that kernel/compiler/library bug - which has no fix, since the
company that developed the product went bankrupt two years ago, and no source
is available...
This is the important point - whether the startup cost is $0 or $5,000 is of
little interest in real life. The very low cost of a nice (RT)Linux distro is
just an extra bonus.
> - Free support
You can pay for it as well, if you prefer a number to dial. (I'm not sure
you'll always get better help faster that way, though. Probably not these
days, at least not for standard GNU/Linux related stuff!)
> - Open sources
Yep, and you may not only look at them, but also *hack* them and use your
modified versions, as long as you allow the community to see your changes, and
put anything generally Good and Useful back into the mainstream versions.
> - Independence from companies
(>)...but you *can* if hell should freeze over some day, and you don't feel like
porting to some other platform. :-)
> "The RTLinux Manifesto" remarks the advantages of MERT's decoupling of
> realtime part and non-realtime part. Is still RTLinux the only OS that
> uses that approach? (apart from RTAI, of course).
> Could you help me with aditional reasons to support my decission?.
Well, appart from all the other stuff discussed, and generally less irritated
and nervous programmers, Tux, the Linux Penguin is kinda' cute... ;-)
> I have seen WindowsNT 4.0 mentioned as a realtime operating system. Can
> it really run hard realtime user tasks?.
Yeah, right, it *can*, with some rather expensive add-ons. That is, if you're
ready to deal with:
* Painfully messy and complex APIs for the real time code.
(NT kernel drivers...)
* Poor RT timing accuracy.
* Huge system footprint.
* Insane minimum system requirements.
* Another $,$$$ or something *per system*.
* No guarantee that *anything* will work or even exist a few years from
now.
* The risk of crappy drivers breaking your RT performance.
* No chance of dealing with the last two problems by maintaining
the OS, drivers and extensions yourself, since you a) have no right
to *hack* the code, only look at it, b) don't even have the sources,
or both.
Maybe I'm sounding a bit anti-Microsoft or something here, but I know where I'm
*not* going as long as I make the decisions. (And it doesn't have much to do
with MS - I'm avoiding most other proprietary solutions as well, regardless of
technical performance or company policy.) Why pay lots of money for extra
trouble and work (*) plus the opportunity to get screwed later on?
I've learned my lesson personally (wasted spare time and money), and I've also
worked professionally for more than two years now, mostly dealing with the
consequences of another situation of this kind. (Sitting with DOS real mode,
and no protected mode upgrade path or anything...) I'm not going to base any
larger project on a non-free, Closed Source platform again, especially not now,
when very few technical and political excuses to do so remains.
Linux, Linux/lowlatency and RTL/RTAI cover the full range of soft and hard RT
performance and provides a whole lot of other very useful things, so why pay for
multiple, incompatible and Closed Source or otherwise restricted/crippled
solutions, when you can do it all on the same base OS, even *at the same time*?
The Free/Open Source concept should basically sell itself to any sane person
with some technical knowledge, and more importantly, experience with
development and maintenance.
(*) At least in the long run - in some cases you may need some extra time to
get started with a Free/Open Source solution, but that's hardly the case
with RT on RTL vs. NT! RTL is easier to program under than DOS, IMHO.
David Olofson
Programmer
Reologica Instruments AB
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