The 2023 State of The Embedded Linux Ecosystem

This past week at the Linux Foundation's Embedded Open-Source Summit in Prague, Sony engineer Tim Bird who is prominent in the embedded Linux community provided another insightful presentation to sum up the current state of the embedded Linux ecosystem.

Tim's 2023 presentation covered recent Linux kernel improvements that have been upstreamed, the still on-going work to get the real-time (RT) kernel support upstreamed, various toolchain changes, and the continued embrace of the Rust programming language throughout the embedded ecosystem.

The presentation also covered many interesting uses of Linux in the embedded space recently, including more satellites running Linux. SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation in fact uses Linux on all of its 60+ processors. NASA's Mars Ingenuity helicopter is also Linux powered.

There isn't any public video recording of the presentation yet, but Tim Bird's slides are detailed and worth a scroll through if you are into the embedded Linux space. The slide deck in full can be found via the EOSS 2023 presentation page for those interested in some interesting weekend reading. On the schedule page are also links for other Embedded Open-Source Summit presentations with many of the other slides also available for your viewing pleasure.