Talk:Embedded operating system

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Windows XP is an embedded operating system? Windows CE is a real-time system? Come on!

Isn't there a desktop version and an Windows XP embedded version? I believe there is.--Jondel 00:03, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Today, RTOS constitues a global industry. In 1981, Ready System developed VRTX32, the world’s first commercial embedded real-time kernel.

This statement seems dubious at best. It ignores the commercial embedded real-time kernels that were around before 1981. Digital Equipment Corporation had RSX-11S, first released in 1975; it was a stripped down RSX-11 kernel, but was intended for embedded applications. I'm certain that there were others. They may each have been targeted at a particular processor family, but they were commercially supported.

There is also a spelling error ("constitues" should be "constitutes"). --- Daniel.glasser (talk) 15:14, 20 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

There are a lot of issues with this article, and it could benefit from a rewrite.

• The description of what an "Embedded Operating System" (EOS) is not entirely accurate. An EOS is designed to run software on a limited resource, purpose built platform. Until recently, it was understood that an EOS hosted a fixed set of applications / tasks that were determined at build time and could not be changed without reloading the software stack (OS and applications), but this has become fuzzier and fuzzier.
• I believe that the article should distinguish between kernels specifically designed for embedded applications and general purpose OS kernels (eg, Linux, BSD, Windows) used in embedded platforms.
• The history of Embedded Operating Systems extends back into at least the 1960s, starting with "monitor" and "executive" software that provided an abstraction layer that a program was written against; not all embedded executives supported multiple tasks running concurrently but many supported task switching or suspending of one task while another task was started and only resuming the original task after the later task had exited. Over time, resource management and various services (storage, device I/O, etc.) were associated with the executive to the point where they became operating system kernels in their own right. You don't hear a lot about these early EOSs these days because computers were expensive, and they were often targeted at specific hardware and applications.
• "Real-time OS" (RTOS), though a related topic, is poorly described by the article. "Real time" refers to deterministic behavior and low-latency response to events (interrupts, exceptions, etc.). Real-time operating systems are a huge topic, and the fact that "RTOS" has become a shorthand for any embedded executive or kernel, whether it supports real-time determinacy or not. Also, Real-Time OSs are not all embedded. There are far more accurate and complete pages in Wikipedia that cover real-time topics.
• There are spelling error, continuity errors, and missing context; one section begins with "As a result,".
• The list of "contemporary" EOSs is both out-of-date and incomplete.

I may attempt to clean this article up if I have the time and can pull my references together. I have my Computer Science textbooks from the mid-to-late 1970s that cover a lot of topics in operating systems. --- Daniel.glasser (talk) 15:56, 20 April 2025 (UTC)Reply