alt Hacker NewsThere's plenty of use cases for Linux on microcontrollers that will be impossible if nommu is removed. The only reason we don't see more Linux on MCUs is the lack of RAM. RP2350 are very close! Running Linux makes it much easier to develop than a plain RTOS.
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> Running Linux makes it much easier to develop than a plain RTOS.
I'm not convinced that's true. All of the microcontroller tooling I've seen has been built around RTOS development; I've never seen anything comparable for µCLinux.
Setting up and maintaining a custom Linux build for any hardware is pretty complicated. There's just so much complexity hidden under config options. The landscape of Linux for embedded computers is a huge mess of unmaintained forks and hacky patch files.
That's all worth it to have an application processor that can run your Python/Java app. It's probably worth it to have a consistent operating system across multiple devices.
Would you have many of those benefits if you were using Linux on a micro though? I can't imagine much 3rd party software would work reliably given the tiny amount of RAM. You'd basically just be using it as a task scheduler and wrapper over drivers. You could get most of the benefits by using an RTOS with a memory allocator.
There's no evidence that significant numbers of people are actually doing that, though.
> Running Linux makes it much easier to develop than a plain RTOS.
What's missing? What would it take to make a plain RTOS that's as easy to develop on/for/with as Linux?
Linux, or any other full OS is simply a waste of that hardware. It makes no sense at all.
It's a 5 gallon pail of compute which is all used up in OS overhead so you can do a cup of work.
If the job were that small that it fits in the remainder, then you could and should have just used 1 cent hardware instead of 1 dollar hardware.