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What is simple x86 Embedded Linux?

I want to play with some linux built-in. I want it to work on the x86 processor (for starters, it will work on my regular PC). I looked online, but the ones I found seem complicated to set up or lack proper documentation. So, what are some good built-in x86-compatible Linux distributions that are easy to configure or have good documentation on how to configure the settings?

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Since the definition of "built-in" depends on who you are talking to, what is considered an embedded Linux distribution will also change.

As others have said, you can go with a set of build tools, for example:

You can also use any "standard" Linux distribution that can often be configured for the embedded environment. They have the advantage of being well tested in their normal environment. Thus, you can choose any of:

Finally, you can also create your own, from the source. In this case, BusyBox is likely to be useful as it provides many features and a common application. To help you with this, there are 3 series: Building Tiny Linux Systems with Busybox ( Part 1 , Part 2, and Part 3 )

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You can take a look at the OpenEmbedded project. This is a meta distribution, which means most of the distribution, not a ready distribution. But using this may require effort on your part. However, this applies to all embedded solutions.

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Busybox

BusyBox is designed as a small executable file for use with the Linux kernel, making it ideal for use with embedded devices. It provides a fairly complete environment for any small or embedded system.

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What do you really mean by "Embedded Linux"? It depends on what you want to run.

For example, you can use OpenWRT , but there are surely others that may better suit your purpose.

If you want to create some kind of multimedia thing, Moblin can also be a solution.

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Maybe you should take a look at the Beagle Board .

This is not x86, but a decent community of developers, and it will give a good idea of ​​how to create and run embedded Linux (for example, a flash file system, somewhat limited RAM ...) and its real cheap!

I can also recommend these two books:

Creating embedded Linux systems and

Embedded Linux Primer

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I would start by looking at the output of the buildroot tool that comes with busybox.

You assume you want to create your own Linux distribution, this is great, but you really need to know how to use the existing one first. I assume that you fully understand how Linux boots and works at a basic level. You will need

  • Some kind of bootable media (in some cases it MAY be rum, but usually it isn’t), from which the firmware can be loaded (in most cases, firmware on x86 is a kind of BIOS or bio-like - except on things like Mac )
  • Bootloader - I like to use syslinux because it is easy (and boots from dos file system)
  • Nucleus
  • Root file system - you can use initramfs for this, in which case it is loaded by the bootloader and expanded at boot time. Initramfs is cool, it avoids the need for “real” root fs or device block drivers, etc. (Due to some bar, but ram is easy).
  • C library (if all your exes are not statically linked)
  • Some user software

I would highly recommend using an emulator (like vmware) to test this, it significantly reduces processing time. The development system should have quite a lot of disk space, since you will probably have to compile everything in the list above and, possibly, some other tools (for example, gcc and C library) that are not small. Your build block should probably have the appropriate Linux distribution installed.

I did it and it is fun, but sometimes frustrating (debugging may be the mission itself)

Happy hack :)

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Busybox + LFS, Gentoo, Arch all do the job well

First you compile your materials in a chroot jail on a dev computer, the last time you do not need to compile, but you need to mirror / store your own repository, because you cannot get old packages from official archive repositories.

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I suggest debian

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