TRON + Linux = "T-Linux" 143
An anonymous reader writes "The T-Engine Forum and MontaVista Software announced today that they are collaborating to combine the long-dominant Japanese embedded operating system, TRON ("The Real-time Operating system Nucleus"), with embedded Linux, in the hopes of creating a standardized software architecture for embedded devices that takes advantage of open source software and the benefits of Linux."
Re:Sounds great (Score:1)
Light Cycles. (Score:1, Funny)
I can feel (Score:1)
Re:Coalition of the Willing (Score:1)
Re:I can feel (Score:2, Funny)
--
mcp:kaaos
question (Score:5, Insightful)
not trolling, but a genuine question: advantage of open source I can understand - what benefit does linux bring to the embedded world, if they already have the core OS?
Re:question (Score:4, Funny)
Re:question (Score:2, Funny)
A fanatical penguin?
An embedded penguin fantacism?
Short answer I don't know apart from what has been said below, branding and marketing. It gives them a solid base to draw support from, by using a well known and trusted name.
Re:question (Score:1)
Re:question (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:question (Score:1, Troll)
1. Ease of development of applications on the embedded products (of course, if they are embedded, why would they need... oh, never mind)
2. Branding. Let's face it. Linux in and of itself has become a buzzword. What sounds better, 'Buy this new toaster that runs a new and efficent OS to handle everything your toast could need', or 'Buy this toaster... it's powered by Linux!'
Re:question (Score:5, Interesting)
Embedded devices are becoming increasingly powerful, and are expected to do more. Have you ever looked into the capabilities of new high-end stereo receivers? It's almost exponential from year to year.
A lot of functions normally requiring a full computer are being moved into embedded devices. It makes it a lot easier to port in an application, if it uses an OS you're already familiar with.
Linux adds another layer of compatibility over the base OS. For optimal speed, yes, you'd want to tweak every line for the target hardware. But the hardware cycle is so fast, that sometimes it's nice to let someone else specialize in the performance tweaks. Lets you concentrate on functionality.
There's already a million ways that this is being done, but an open and high-quality (yet to be seen) alternative is always welcome.
Re:question (Score:1)
Re:question (Score:1)
Re:question (Score:2)
Also having a single OS that is supported quite well has its advantages too. Linux does offer a reusability and a standard api, where as other embedded OSs need to be almost completely designed for a different device (vxWorks).
answer (Score:3, Informative)
Of course there are other reasons, but how much more of a reason should they need.
Re:question (Score:2)
Re:question (Score:5, Informative)
[redhat.com]
Redhat's eCos already supports uITRON (Micro Industrial TRON, the most popular flavor) through a compatibility layer.
Re:question (Score:3, Funny)
Free advertising on Slashdot.
Re:question (Score:3, Funny)
Ha! Somebody should print the source code and write an article about how they installed Linux on a ream of paper...
Re:question (Score:2)
hehehe
Of course, we'd get hundreds of stale 'page fault' jokes to the tune of "if it were the Windows source code..."
Re:question (Score:3, Interesting)
Focus shifts, then, on feature and performance, and the ol' not-sure-if-I-am-doing-this-right-because-I-don't - fully-understand-the-only-docs-I-can-find janx spirit becomes less and less evident
Smell my bok choy (Score:1)
DARN!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:DARN!! (Score:1)
To quote the Bit:
YeS... YeS... YeS, YeS, YeS, YeS, YeS, YeS, YeS, YeS, YeS... Noooo!
MCP! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:MCP! (Score:2)
Microsoft Control Program?
Re:MCP! (Score:2)
MCP: Microsoft Crashing Program
Re:MCP! (Score:2)
Re:MCP! (Score:2)
They are batch-controlled systems and you submit jobs to the MCP for processing.
I *loved* it when I saw it!
bad slashdot math (Score:1, Funny)
acronyms (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:acronyms (Score:4, Funny)
Re:acronyms (Score:3, Funny)
hee hee, neutered asshole.
Re:acronyms (Score:2)
The Really Obscure Nucleus
Tiny Real-time Operational Neural-net
Techno Real Op Net
This Retarded Opportunistic Name
Re:acronyms (Score:5, Funny)
Bless you.
Re:acronyms (Score:1)
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:1)
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:1)
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:1, Offtopic)
> I'm wondering, what's the worse
"Worst"
> thing you imply happened before recorded history? A few hundred
> wolves terrorizing a big herd of sheeps a few million years ago?
> Or are you counting the dino-killing asteroid as a terrorist attack?
Cain slaying Abel. A terrorist attack singlehandedly killing off a quarter of the world's population.
-JC
(joyously plagiarizing Jeremy Pascal)
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:1)
Mullah Noah, and that whole Great Flood thing...
Come on... even assuming a world population of only, say 10,000 that would mean an extinction on the scale of 99.99% at least, and that's just the humans, nevermind the animals.
(I always wondered though, did they have to load up 2 dolphins, as well, or was it just the land animals that had to pay for man's evil?)
So... (Score:1, Interesting)
Cain was not a terrorist. His goal was not terror, nor was it to overthrow a government, or liberate any supposedly oppressed people, yadda yadda. (Note: AFAICT, there was no government at that time.)
Cain was a murderer, plain and simple. His goal was to off Abel. Which he did with great gusto.
If you want a real Biblical terrorist, look at the rest of the Old Testament. God's probably the top-rated terrorist - the Great Flood and the Angel o
TRON Linux Announced (Score:4, Funny)
Japan - TRON Linux was announced and promptly sued into a smoking crater in the ground by Disney today. Disney representatives stated they were merely protecting their valuable intellectual property and that Linux is only used by thieves, anyways. MSFT rose 4 points.
In other news (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In other news (Score:1)
pffft - that's GNUMCP to you, punk ;)
Re:What a stretch (Score:1)
I bet EVERY geek over in Japan knows about the movie Tron, considering that all geeks are culturally exactly the same everywhere.
Zippy Blue Lights (Score:2, Redundant)
Damnit, when I saw the headline I was thinking I'd finally get some cool 3D interface with zippy blue lights and neat sound FX!
I'm soooo disappointed. Now I don't even get a angry-spooky-face-in-a-spinning-thing when the kernel panics.
Blockwars [blockwars.com]: a realtime, multiplayer game similar to Tetris.
Re:Zippy Blue Lights (Score:2)
Look on the bright side. This way you don't get sentenced to the Game Grid and discorporated by a laser when the kernel panics.
Obligatory TRON quote: (Score:2)
Just thought that was appropriate =)
patent... (Score:3)
I don't see that as necessary. The validity of the patent seems very much in question to many people. I can't think of anybody better to test the validity of the patent than a large association of Japanese real-time companies.
Personally I think the patent is bogus (Score:3, Interesting)
All that I see RTLinux doing is acting as a microkernel that can switch between OS personalities. It just so happens that they lost their way and created a whole real-time OS instead of setting it up as a personality over the microkernel.
The other way of looking at the RTLinux patent is that they've patented the idea of running a VM hosted OS under a real-time system. Again, that just doesn't make sense as an enforceable patent or you could start patenting any specific combination of host and guest sys
Re:patent... (Score:2)
I am not sure what license approach monta-vista use but i guess it is some flavour of the GPL.
Getting back to the question of the validity of the patent itself, I have written individual tasks from real time RISC based applications (but I'm better now). What I would like to kn
Correction (Score:2)
Surely it should be T-GNU/Linux.
> creating a standardized software architecture
> for embedded devices that takes (sic) advantage
> of open source software and the benefits of
> Linux (sic)
Imagine a baerwolf cluster of those!
Re:Correction (Score:2)
Certainly sounds better
Re:Correction (Score:2)
-- rms
standardized software architecture??? (Score:1)
Um...I'm failing to see something here. What could possibly come out of this that's more standard than *nix? It seems that they are just trying to piggyback their core in on top of a current "standard..."
And, just to beat the horse even further to death, !
Trademark infringement w/ Mentor's Nucleus RTOS? (Score:3, Interesting)
Mentor, the makers of the real time operating system "Nucleus" (tm), would appear to have reasonable grounds for confusion with a product in the same market place "The Real Time Operating system Nucleus Linux" aka TRON-Linux.
http://www.mentor.com/nucleus/ [mentor.com]
Sure you can argue Nucleus is a general term, but I doubt that argument holds much weight when both names are used in the same market. Heck, these two are even in the same tiny corner of the computer word (realtime operating systems).
Of course, IANAL, much less a trademark specialist. Anyone more educated on the topic care to comment?
Re:Unlikely (Score:3, Informative)
I was reading about TRON in Byte Magazine in the mid-1980's. This almost certainly pre-dates anything Mentor has done, much less registered.
Schwab
Re:Trademark infringement w/ Mentor's Nucleus RTOS (Score:2)
TRON is a system that dates back at least to the early 80s. Nucleus - their website is obviously targeted for marketing droids - probably postdates it, making a trademark infringement suit pointless and possibly dangerous.
Also, Nucleus has little grounds for a trademark infringement
Re:Trademark infringement w/ Mentor's Nucleus RTOS (Score:2)
* [super-nova.co.jp]
http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/projecthistory.
Re:Trademark infringement w/ Mentor's Nucleus RTOS (Score:1)
Thanks to all who provided answers and insight.
Not a chance (Score:3, Informative)
"Nucleus" has been around for a rather long time, usually used to indicate the center or core of something (analagous to the nucleus of a cell.)
Even more damning for any attempt by Mentor to enforce any copyright claims is the fact that terms like "nucleus" and "core" have been used in operating systems textbooks and papers since the seventies.
TRON also only uses the word as part of an acronym, not as part of a trademark.
The biggest issue would be (as others have pointed out) that TRON existed long b
I'll SUE! (Score:4, Funny)
The first was filed by Disney, because they OWN TRON.
The second was filed by SCO, because they OWN Unix, and this whole TRON thing might somehow cut into their profits.
The third was also filed by SCO. It was a billion dollar lawsuit against Disney. SCO also threatened to pull Disney's TRON license, which could prevent Disney from using bits, light cycles, or recognizers, or strange old men rotating in I/O towers at any future time.
I'll be laughing when... (Score:2)
Makes sense to me (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, it's just a start. Once you have such a moidel in place, other open source OSs would be just as welcome. You just have to start as simply as possible. Right?
Ahem! (Score:2)
TRON Code (Score:1)
Wow, this reminds me of an old bet I won... (Score:2, Interesting)
Was the same guy who didn't understand why I kept calling ! "bang" >:)
CPU's? (Score:2)
Rus
Re:CPU's? (Score:2, Insightful)
So, I'm guessing that they would use that existing kernel code on existing hardware rather than switching to x86. Desktop-oriented x86 chips by Intel and AMD are w
Oh My! (Score:1)
- IP
neato (Score:1)
T-Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)
Noooo! Deutsche Telekom [t-online.de], take your hands off Linux!
For those who don't know them, about every product as a T prefixed: T-Mobile, T-Net, T-Systems, T-Online... and now T-LInux)
t-linux??? (Score:1, Troll)
MAYBE!! trunix or trinix....
but c'mon get creative!
I'd rather they worked on BTRON (Score:2)
Bolting TRON and Linux together does not seem to offer any particular advantages to the world as a whole, although it might be an advantage to TRON.
Use BTRON [btron.com] today! Documentation probably Japanese only but still in many ways easier to read than GNU Info.
They also announced a new ad slogan: (Score:3, Funny)
Ooohh (Score:1)
Virus Proof? (Score:2)
Lame, I know, but it's a slow day at work.
Test post (Score:3, Funny)
Kernel Panic: Light Bike On Fire (Score:3, Funny)