Linux

5 Things to Understand Before Building a Linux-Based Embedded Device

Your customer asked you to build a Linux-based device. You’re a skilled developer but not experienced with embedded Linux. Here’s a quick overview of the key elements of Linux-based development you’ll need to master in order to successfully move from working prototype to Minimum Viable Product (MVP…

Is Linux OS the Right Platform for Your Medical Device?

Today’s medical devices are more capable than ever. But with those capabilities comes complexity – which in turn makes developing these devices more challenging. Creating a future-proof medical device solution, from CT scanning machines to patient-monitoring equipment, requires building on a…

GPIO Programming: Exploring the libgpiod Library

After a hiatus of more than a year, I wanted to pick up this blog series and cover another GPIO library available on Linux. Since the last time I wrote on this topic, this library has become more widely supported and available on platforms like the Raspberry Pi, so the time was right to explore it…

How to Control GPIO Hardware from C or C++

My last post, part 4 in the GPIO Programming series, showed some ways to program GPIO from Python. Python offers a number of advantages as a programming language including a short learning curve, no need for compilation, and the availability of many add-on modules. However, true compiled…

Run Ubuntu Linux on Windows with This One Weird Trick

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a new feature of Windows 10 (1) that allows you to run native Linux programs directly on Windows, alongside other Windows applications. When WSL is enabled, it installs an Ubuntu user-mode image that was created by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux…

How to Compile Qt from Source Code on Linux

Happy New Year! In previous blogs I have covered installing Qt and Qt Creator on Windows and on Linux using the Qt installer and pre-built binaries. In this post, aimed at developers with novice-level Qt skills, we'll look at how you can build Qt yourself from source code. Rationale Why would…

Getting Started With Qt and Qt Creator on Linux

My recent blog post covered how to set up Qt and Qt Creator on a Windows 10 system. In this post I'll look at how to configure a Linux system for Qt desktop development. Since the set up process on Linux is almost identical to that on Windows, rather than repeat the information I refer you to that…

Retrocomputing: Motif and CDE

Introduction In this blog post, we'll look at a couple of older graphical user interface toolkits that were popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Why would anyone care about old software like this? One reason is purely for nostalgia, particularly if you used these systems back in the days when they…