snapgear and uClinux

snapgear and uClinux

[David Kesselring]

Has anyone out there used uClinux or snapgear's distro with a mips
processor? Did you have any unexpected suprises? Do these tools help get
the footprint smaller or is it easier to do something with the linux-mips
tree?

David Kesselring
Atmel MMC
dkesselr@mmc.atmel.com
919-462-6587

Re: snapgear and uClinux

[Wolfgang Denk]

In message <Pine.GSO.4.44.0311121132480.5676-100000@ares.mmc.atmel.com> you wrote:
> Has anyone out there used uClinux or snapgear's distro with a mips
> processor? Did you have any unexpected suprises? Do these tools help get
> the footprint smaller or is it easier to do something with the linux-mips
> tree?

I have seen uCLinux running on the Purple board (MIPS 5Kc CPU core).

If you have a MMU on your chip you should always go for the "real" Linux.

Reducing the memory footprint is not so much a kernel issue  but  one
of  the application level - using standard tools linked against glibc
vs. busybox with uClibc for example.


Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
Software Engineering:  Embedded and Realtime Systems,  Embedded Linux
Phone: (+49)-8142-4596-87  Fax: (+49)-8142-4596-88  Email: wd@denx.de
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice
versa.

Re: snapgear and uClinux

[Ralf Baechle]

On Wed, Nov 12, 2003 at 05:48:05PM +0100, Wolfgang Denk wrote:

> > processor? Did you have any unexpected suprises? Do these tools help get
> > the footprint smaller or is it easier to do something with the linux-mips
> > tree?

> If you have a MMU on your chip you should always go for the "real" Linux.
> 
> Reducing the memory footprint is not so much a kernel issue  but  one
> of  the application level - using standard tools linked against glibc
> vs. busybox with uClibc for example.

Certain mechanism such as copy on write are only possible with an MMU and
can achieve dramatic memory savings.  The common believe that memory
protection results in significant overhead isn't true anymore, so
Wolfgang ist certainly right here.

  Ralf