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Operating Systems Software

TRON + Linux = "T-Linux" 143

Posted by timothy from the gudgilla dept.
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."
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TRON + Linux = "T-Linux" More

TRON + Linux = "T-Linux"

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  • Light Cycles. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Aslong as we can use those light cycles I will be glad to use it.
  • the MCP jokes coming already.

  • question (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2003 @11:55PM (#5541843) Journal
    takes advantage of open source software and the benefits of Linux.

    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)

      by Evil Adrian ( 253301 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2003 @11:57PM (#5541856) Homepage
      A cute penguin logo!
      • Embedded fanaticism?

        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.
        • How about a Beowulf Cluster of embedded fanatical penguins carrying rocket launchers and posters of Natalie Portman covered in hot grits??

    • Re:question (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ergo98 ( 9391 )
      Marketing. I'm surprized they don't talk about how they're also Bluetooth+XML enabling it.
    • I thought the same thing, and I can only come up with two answers.

      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)

      by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @12:27AM (#5541968) Homepage Journal
      Plenty.

      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.
      • 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.
        Indeed, which makes it all the more ironic that the highest-end receivers are judged primarily on how cleanly they can get amplify a simple stereo audio signal (which typically means bypassing all that electronic wizardry).
      • Yeah but that doesn't change the fact that they already have the core OS. Moving that to OSS, fine; but what does linux has to do with it? I am not arguing against the need for an OS for the progressively complex embedded systems, but the relationship (advantages, no less) thereof (especially in this case) with linux?
        • Development. It is much easier to develop on an embedded device if it is running the same OS as your desktop. On the desktop, you only need to simulate the device drivers, but the software can be tested natively.

          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)

      by djupedal ( 584558 )
      Silly question, perhaps...the news last month from Japan explained that the manufs. there are simply looking to be MS free. And since they've recognized that their own efforts have failed, while Linux is growing, they've bitten the bullet and moved on.

      Of course there are other reasons, but how much more of a reason should they need.
    • Its all about the Ben Franklins: money! They dont have to pay a license fee for Linux, thus more profit.

    • Re:question (Score:5, Informative)

      by zbik ( 194004 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @12:46AM (#5542052)
      TRON is more of an OS specificication than an OS; many vendors implement the TRON API in their RTOS, and many applications (in Japan) are developed for it. This project could be cool because it would enable companies to adopt Linux while maintaining compatibility with their legacy embedded apps -- provided this does not become a proprietary MontaVista technology. The benefit of Linux is the massive amount of hardware it will run on, and the all the development tools & libraries available.

      [redhat.com]
      Redhat's eCos already supports uITRON (Micro Industrial TRON, the most popular flavor) through a compatibility layer.

    • "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?"

      Free advertising on Slashdot.

      • Re:question (Score:3, Funny)

        by NanoGator ( 522640 )
        "Free advertising on Slashdot."/i.

        Ha! Somebody should print the source code and write an article about how they installed Linux on a ream of paper...
        • "Ha! Somebody should print the source code and write an article about how they installed Linux on a ream of paper..."

          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)

      by torpor ( 458 )
      Oh man, the sky is the limit ... development in the OSS realm is *easier*, because you can compare notes with other professionals who have - quite often - explored territories you've only begun to chart.

      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 ... of course, there is plenty of that janx in linux land, but I believe you're referring to OSS specifically fr
  • So, removable optical media containing this operating system would be called...?

  • DARN!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Xandar01 ( 612884 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2003 @11:56PM (#5541847) Journal
    I was really hoping this had something to do with lightcycles and recognizers.
    • I was really hoping this had something to do with lightcycles and recognizers.

      To quote the Bit:

      YeS... YeS... YeS, YeS, YeS, YeS, YeS, YeS, YeS, YeS, YeS... Noooo!

  • MCP! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Traicovn ( 226034 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2003 @11:56PM (#5541849) Homepage
    Personally, I think that if we have a 'tron' linux that somewhere they better make something named 'MCP'. Maybe root should be replaced with the loggin MCP.... heheheh...
    • Personally, I think that if we have a 'tron' linux that somewhere they better make something named 'MCP'

      Microsoft Control Program?

    • Unisys mainframes created long before Tron, but still in use today powering banks and airline booking systems have an MCP component of the basic OS (not sure if it was OS/1100 or the A-Series from the Sperry machines).

      They are batch-controlled systems and you submit jobs to the MCP for processing.

      I *loved* it when I saw it!
  • I'm pretty sure Tron + Linux = "Li'l nuts"

  • acronyms (Score:3, Insightful)

    by shird ( 566377 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2003 @11:58PM (#5541862) Homepage Journal
    Seriously, what is it with people completely bending the rules of acronyms just to make something sound cute/cool. "The Real-time Operating system Nucleus" should be called "TROSN"

  • TRON Linux Announced (Score:4, Funny)

    by joenobody ( 72202 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @12:05AM (#5541891)

    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)

    by worst_name_ever ( 633374 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @12:07AM (#5541899)
    Linux kernel renamed "Master Control Program".

  • Zippy Blue Lights (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Myriad ( 89793 )
    TRON + Linux = "T-Linux"

    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.

    • 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!

      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.
  • Do you realize how many outside systems I've gone into? How many programs I've appropriated?

    Just thought that was appropriate =)

  • patent... (Score:3)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @12:29AM (#5541978)
    One interesting hurdle along the path is likely to be finding a way to build a dual-kernel system that can add T-Kernel's real-time capabilities to Linux's rich set of sophisticated OS features without violating the RTLinux patent.

    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.

    • 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

    • From what i can see (although the link to the link on the license in the aritcle is broken), it would appear that irrespective of whether the patent is valid or not, as long as you stick to the GPL you do not incur a license fee.

      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
  • > TRON + Linux = "T-Linux"

    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!
  • "in the hopes of creating a standardized software architecture for embedded devices that takes advantage of open source software and the benefits of Linux."
    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)

    by mkettler ( 6309 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @12:33AM (#5541998)
    As much as I despise frivolous trademark infringement suits, this one seems to be strongly in favor the side of the trademark holder, were it to become an issue.

    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)

      by ewhac ( 5844 )

      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

    • 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.

      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
    • The TRON project was started in 1984*, meaning they've been using the name for 15 years. If Nucleus wanted to press a claim, they would lose and possibly be countersued for trademark infringement, or just have the trademark lost as a generic term.

      * [super-nova.co.jp]
      http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/projecthistory.h tm l

    • Not a chance (Score:3, Informative)

      by msobkow ( 48369 )

      "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)

    by de_boer_man ( 459797 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @12:40AM (#5542018)
    In related news a flurry of lawsuits were recently filed:

    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.
  • ...Disney sues them for violating their "Tron" trademark. Come to think of it, one of these days I should get around to trademarking every possible 3- letter acronym that isn't already taken. I could extort gazillions of $$$ out of honest companies with that kind of IP-squatting.

  • Makes sense to me (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @12:52AM (#5542072) Journal
    It makes perfect sense. How can you have a truly standard hardware architecture that software developers and hardware engineers can work with openly, if it isn't all open source from the ground up (so to speak)? If you are going to push for such a model, why not choose the most established (and the most popular and the most coporate backed) open source operating system? This insures maximum future interoperability.

    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)

    by marhar ( 66825 )
    Don't you mean GNU/T-Linux... and on RMS's birthday, for shame!
  • What's cool about TRON is the TRON code character encoding format, which supports all Unicode characters and more. By switching between different character set planes (like ISO 2022 does), they do away with pesky Unicode surrogate pairs, which not even Windows 2000 supports.
  • This reminds me of the time I won $5 from a guy because he didn't believe me that "TRON" was short for "TRace ON"- (and the TROFF , well duh)~

    Was the same guy who didn't understand why I kept calling ! "bang" >:)

  • CPU's? (Score:2)

    by rf0 ( 159958 )
    Looking over the article is says that TRON supports SH, MR, ARM, and MIPS. These I can understand and am happy with the idea. Now I'm not trolling but would there be any benefit or using linux's x86 code and running embedded systems on Intel/AMD or are they to big/hot/complicated/etc to be of any use in embedded systems?

    Rus

    • Re:CPU's? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bobthemonkey13 ( 215219 )
      Um... According to the Linux Kernel Archives [kernel.org]:

      Linux was first developed for 32-bit x86-based PCs (386 or higher). These days it also runs on (at least) the Compaq Alpha AXP, Sun SPARC and UltraSPARC, Motorola 68000, PowerPC, PowerPC64,

      ARM, Hitachi SuperH, IBM S/390, MIPS, HP PA-RISC, Intel IA-64, DEC VAX, AMD x86-64 and CRIS architectures.

      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

  • Blasphemy! How dare you take the good TRON's [tron20.net] name in vain!

    - IP
  • Maybe we can all wear neon clothes and roll around on geometric objects while we kernel tune.

  • T-Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by anno1602 ( 320047 )

    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)

    by _ph1ux_ ( 216706 )
    TRONIX TRONIX TRONIX

    MAYBE!! trunix or trinix....

    but c'mon get creative!
  • ...seeing as it's already the standard TRON for the desktop and actually has unique TRON-style features (i.e. the universal character set).

    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)

    by sammy baby ( 14909 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @10:48AM (#5543952) Journal
    "TRON - fighting for the users."
  • I always wanted Bruce Boxleitner inside my machine ... but then with a certain Bruce Boxleitner character's penchant for nuclear weapons, does my machine become a weapon of mass destruction?
  • The T-Linux is only susceptible to the mutagenic T-Virus, product of the Umbrella corporation's CS division buried deep under Racoon City.

    Lame, I know, but it's a slow day at work.

  • Test post (Score:3, Funny)

    by dbarclay10 ( 70443 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2003 @02:59PM (#5545991)
    Test post, please ignore.

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