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Embedded Linux Applications: An Overview

By Darrick Addison
2005-04-30

Software and Hardware Requirements
Several user-interface tools and programs enhance the versatility of the Linux basic kernel. It's helpful to look at Linux as a continuum in this context, ranging from a stripped-down micro-kernel with memory management, task switching and timer services to a full-blown server supporting a complete range of file system and network services.

A minimal Embedded Linux system needs just three essential elements:

• A boot utility
• The Linux micro-kernel, composed of memory management, process management and timing services
• An initialization process

To doing anything useful while remaining minimal, you also need to add:

• Drivers for hardware
• One or more application processes to provide the needed functionality

As additional requirements become necessary, you might also want:

• A file system (perhaps in ROM or RAM)
• TCP/IP network stack
• A disk for storing semi-transient data and swap capability
• A 32-bit internal CPU (required by all complete Linux systems)



Tutorial pages:

First published by IBM DeveloperWorks
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