You sell a lot of nonsense.

Sometimes it is quite disappointing how well this can be turned around. Windows is also pretty cumbersome, and security is sometimes an issue (I don’t recommend installing Windows on a router, as Linux is not uncommon). Many devices sometimes have a few hundred megabytes of RAM and a frugal CPU that may not even reach 1 GHz. My thermostat has a Freescale TM i.MX27 400MHz CPU and 128MB of RAM, which is more than enough for my Linux kernel, Qt interface and some very simple AI. And do you want to install Windows on it? You can instantly upgrade your entire thermostat to a computer that’s too thick for IoT standards and ultimately you can’t make better use of it. And this is an application that does not even need batteries, because the devices are not economical enough for applications that have to do this for a longer period of time.

Now you sometimes have more powerful hardware, such as the Nvidia Jetson Nano. But you won’t be installing Windows on that either. This is not even made available. In much of this industry, Windows simply does not exist. So why support it? Try running ROS on Windows. It’s possible, but it won’t make you happy, the support is really bad.

For that chaotic jungle, weaker devices (like e-readers, routers, or simpler thermostats) run a completely custom Linux distro made by the manufacturer. IoT technologies and somewhat heavier bots run by default on older Ubuntu installations. These are the two flavors you mainly encounter. Boston Dynamics Spot runs Ubuntu 18.04, and recent ROS1 installs usually run 20.04. ROS2 still wants to be installed on 22.04.

Then I talk about the programs that run on the operating system. Often times you don’t even have that. Then you just have a microcontroller, or maybe even a PLC or in the rare case an FPGA.

I’m going to be in the world of automation for a while, but I’m a bit against the Internet of Things. When we run into Windows, it always gets in the way, and it usually means we spend a week doing something that could have been done in a day. And with some regularity through hacking procedures because we are trying to force something in Windows that is meant for Linux. Windows has never been on our side.

[Reactie gewijzigd door Amanoo op 23 augustus 2022 03:51]