I have a new project at work, and part of the job is determining what RTOS we’re going to use on the platform, which is basically a poor man’s network router.
Linux is specified in the conceptual design, and I have to verify that it’s the best fit. Windows CE is the alternative, with VxWorks as a longshot in third place. I’ve been surfing for 3 days now, trying to find an objective comparison in writing. No luck. I can easily find sites run by the various apologists touting their OS as the better choice, and I don’t have the time or the experience on the Linux side to wade through the Bravo Sierra to get to the truth.
Anybody out there who can help me out? Oh, and please refrain from the usual ‘Windows sucks!’ or ‘Linux sucks!’ comments.
Objective? Ha! No, you’re not going to find that.
If you want real time and you want a router, I’d say go with linux. There are small embedded linux distributions specifically geared towards routers. Make sure you use something with the 2.6 kernel if you want the real time stuff. If you need better real time than the standard linux provides, check out montevista.
Another division of the company I work for has a fancy shmancy communications device that used to run on CE. They are switching to linux because of security issues that they could not resolve under CE.
A couple of words of warning about linux. The documentation sucks. You can also spend a lot of time chasing kernel/library versions and getting your build options set right. Despite these down sides, I would still recommend linux for you.
FYI - a lot of those little linksys type routers use intel xscale processors running snapgear linux.