BMW Continues Making Great Progress With Linux

In recent years we have seen prominent automobile manufacturer BMW engaging more with open-source and Linux. At this week's Open-Source Summit Europe / Embedded Linux Conference Europe they talked more about their increasing usage of Linux from their assembly line to within automobiles.

Helio Chissini de Castro of BMW presented at the event this week. For those not in attendance his slide deck is available here (PDF). Some of the highlights include:

- BMW's "head unit" / in-vehicle infotainment system is running on Linux.

- BMW's Linux OS is "from scratch" but based on Yocto.

- The BMW GUI code was ported to Linux for preserving their legacy code-base.

- They build everything from source internally and no longer accept arbitrary binary blobs.

- BMW is participating in the Linux Foundation's ELISA project for open-source safety-critical systems. Toyota, Suzuki, and others are also involved with ELISA.

- They are also beginning to make use of Linux on their assembly lines.