Last week’s Linux Collaboration Summit yielded some interesting recent developments that are sure to help continue moving the platform toward even more usefulness for businesses.

One such innovation is something called the Yocto Project.  As they describe it on the website, Yocto is “an open source collaboration project that provides templates, tools and methods to help you create custom Linux-based systems for embedded products regardless of the hardware architecture.”  Sounds good enough but there’s more to it than that.

Yocto project starts with an ultra bare-bones Linux platform designed for ARM or x86 chips, allowing people to develop a Linux platform for a device with only what is needed and in a more efficient manner (starting bare and building up, versus the other way around).  Millions have been spent by other corporations developing device platforms on Linux by pulling out what is not needed from an existing Linux kernel until they’ve engineered it down to the essentials for that particular device.  Now developers can use Yocto to avoid all of that mess and expense to get to what they need for their device development project. 

This represents a considerable competitive advantage as it opens up use of the Linux platform in device development to a much larger crowd rather than only those who have the deep pockets and existing sales to weather extensive development cycles.  This is very likely to result in the emergence of more device development shops meeting various markets using Linux.

To get involved with Linux development, GogoTraining has the following expert courses:

• Linux Essentials
• Introduction to Embedded Linux
• Linux Device Drivers: Programming at the Kernel Level
• Red Hat Linux System Administration Part 1
• Red Hat Linux System Administration Part 2
• Red Hat Linux Network Administration