Ask Slashdot: Which OS For an Embedded Display Unit? 135
First time accepted submitter spouse writes "We are a small Software Design team of 8 developers, working with home brewed Linux to make our ARM7, ARM9 and Intel based embedded products work. Now we want to develop our first 7 inch touch screen tablet-like device serving as control panel for a set of our 'black box' devices. We see Android as a possible choice due to the tablet like character of our applications. We will need App management and the GUI elements. We do not need all the apps out there in the store, we do not need any telephone/sms/email/webbrowser support. Will we end with modifying Android just as much as our own Linux derivate to make things work? Does it make sense to build the hardware of the touch panel based on google reference design to minimize the effort? Are there any experiences out there? Who has done that before and what are the experiences of that? How hard is it to make a product really work with Android? What is the right choice here? Shall we try?"
why reinvent the wheel? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:But why...? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, yes, yes! You would be foolish to rebuild the hardware.
Here are 47,826 vendors in China willing to sell you Android tablets.
http://www.dhgate.com/wholesale/search.do?act=search&searchkey=android&catalog=#search [dhgate.com]
You can buy 7in Android tablets shipped to your door for $60.
Busybox-based linux (Score:2, Informative)
Keep it small and simple so it boots fast. We use a bunch of them from board and chip
vendors. The one from Atmel seems fine.
They're all GPL Violating, that's why (Score:4, Informative)
how many of those 47,826 vendors ships source code? have you any fucking idea how hard it is to get these companies to fucking well understand the GPL, dickhead? i've been dealing with these companies for eighteen fucking months, and they just don't give a flying fuck. not to mention the simple fact that they themselves are supplied with GPL-violating binary-only distributions, they have absolutely no software expertise whatsoever; their ODM software suppliers can't keep hold of their own developers because the supply of software engineers in China is so in demand.
it takes about three to four months of careful negotiation, with about a 1% hit rate (i.e. 99% of them don't understand english except phrases like "the money has been transferred" and "we want to order XX,XXX units", and those that do understand don't give a shit) we've found THREE suppliers who comprehend the GPL, and that was only after explaining it to them. of those two suppliers, one STILL doesn't give a shit, one of them was so terrified of the consequences that they terminated sales of the product, and the other one is, thank god, still in the running, is willing to work with us and we will supply their next software *for* them. ... but that was after 18 months to 2 years of searching. now, are you _seriously_ suggesting to these guys that they spend allll their time and money doing exactly the same thing? i think you'll find that they're better off actually designing their own hardware and writing their own software.
anyway, to answer the actual question: use openembedded to custom-build an angstrom linux distro. it's been around for over 10 years, now, so is a pretty mature development platform, and has some superb recipes. ask on the openembedded lists or irc, be patient and you'll get the advice you seek.