Linux Support

• Device drivers for CAN/CANopen products and other I/O interface products.
• Well defined user space libraries providing stable and documented APIs.
• Especially esd's CAN/CANopen Interface Boards are also directly supported by the mainline Linux kernel ('SocketCAN').

In times of new Linux capable SOC CPUs coming up nearly every day, Linux is the OS of first choice. Linux is often the first OS that is available for brand new embedded CPUs. 

• esd's embedded computing platforms are developed with a strong focus on the Linux OS. This also includes using the open source bootloader U-Boot when possible.
• esd has Linux experience on many platforms: from ARM to PowerPC, from below 100 MHz to above 1 GHz, from low cost SOCs (e.g. ARM9) to high-end multicore CPUs (e.g. QorIQ).
• We provide Linux BSPs for our standard and custom specific platforms. This includes kernel adaption and userland composition. Especially for custom projects this process will be trimmed according to our customers' and projects' needs.

To fulfil the demand on Linux in real-time applications esd supports PREEMPT_RT. PREEMPT_RT (also known as Linux with RT-patch) makes the standard Linux kernel suitable for real-time scenarios. For application programmers PREEMPT_RT is the simplest approach because the typical Linux POSIX API can be used. Only minimal care must be taken when going real-time. The RT-patch makes the standard Linux kernel preemptable and more deterministic and allows scheduling latencies of about 100 µs with today's typical embedded platforms. In detail esd provides:

• PREEMPT_RT enabled kernels for esd's embedded platforms and customized products
• Linux device drivers for esd's interface products that have been tested on PREEMPT_RT systems

• esd offers complete protocol stacks for CANopen, J1939, EtherCAT and other fieldbus technologies.
• The APIs are common under all supported operating systems so that migration to or from Linux is a simple task.

• Among our standard products, we offer customer specific software solutions based on Linux as engineering service.
• This ranges from adding special functions to our drivers, extending APIs up to application development with GUI toolkits like QT.
• Please contact our sales team.

• We offer training courses that are especially suited for our off-the-shelf or customized projects based on embedded Linux.
• esd provides long term support for drivers and BSPs - even back to far outdated Linux kernels.
• Support and training are provided by esd's highly motivated and experienced engineers and developer team.
• Please contact our support team.

esd's software support for Linux is subject of continuous development. For missing Linux support and for customer specific software solutions, please contact our support team. We will send you the required software or find a different solution based on your requirements.