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Re: Real Time O.S vs 'conventional' one.



Also sprach Marcin Jessa (lists%yazzy.org@localhost)
 
> I have embedded boards which I want to use as acess points for WLAN
> infrastructure.
> The choice is between NetBSD and Real Time Linux.
> What I am wondering about is if there is any advantage using real
> time O.S on wireless enviroment. 

A RTOS is an OS designed to meet time constraints and optimized
prediction of process behaviour. It is not necessarily designed to be
as fast as possible. 

> Would one gain anything speedwise using RTOS ?

That can't usually be predicted. An RTOS doesn't need to be faster
than a normal one, it just has to meet it's timing constraints. 



BTW: I had to use RT-Linux in a course on RT programming (scheduling,
semaphores, Dining philosophers problem and so on) and learned that
RTLinux is just a bunch of wild hacks to get some kind of RT into the
Kernel. It was running on a normal Linuxkernel[1] and therefor, it wasn't a
real hard RTOS. As what I know from electrical engineering, all hard
RTOS are specifically designed for a task or device. Bringing hard
RTOS to a Unix is IMHO almost unsolvable. 

So my advice is NetBSD, don't forget, it holds the Internet2 Land
Speed Record[2] :-)



[1] at least in our Lab
[2] http://www.netbsd.org/Changes/#internet2-landspeed2
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