When integrated with the vendor’s family of rugged, x86-based single-board computers (SBCs), Blue Collar Linux provides an excellent starting point for developing applications in machine control, instrumentation and machine-to-machine communications, among other areas, says the vendor. “Linux is a fast, low-cost and widely accepted operating system well-suited for robust embedded applications,” says Robert A. Burckle, vice president at the vendor. “Using a standard distribution for development and the Linux 2.6 kernel, we have created a small, royalty-free embedded operating system for use on our various SBC platform. It can be easily recreated from the source files using most distributions and does not require any special or proprietary development tools.”