Why Wind River Linux
Wind River® Linux enables you to develop, deploy, and operate robust, reliable, and secure embedded solutions running on a purpose-built Linux operating system.
Avoid the risk and effort associated with roll-your-own (RYO) or unsupported silicon vendor Linux. Rely on Wind River to keep your code base up to date, track and fix defects, apply security patches, avoid technical debt, and customize your purpose-built Linux to adhere to strict market specifications and certifications. Wind River can also facilitate your IP and export compliance and significantly reduce your operational costs.
Wind River Linux Overview
Purpose Built, Community-Based Linux with Long Term Commercial Support
Wind River Linux customizes the Linux OS for the specific requirements of your application. It includes an integrated artifact repository that is accessible to development and deployment teams alike, simplifying sharing and collaboration across the organization.
Wind River is a founding member, advisory board member, and the largest commercial software contributor to the Yocto Project, collectively investing more than 8,000 commits and 2.5M lines of code changes over the past four years. Wind River actively upstreams and contributes fixes and enhancements back into the project while building Yocto Project support into the next generation of the Wind River platform.
Long Term Support
- Maintenance that includes CVE monitoring and fixes
- Daily testing and hardening to shrink the threat landscape
- Support for a minimum of 10+ years for every Long Term Support (LTS) release
- A variety of board support packages (BSPs) for a wide range of x86 and Arm hardware
- An easily repeatable build process that is simplified with the Build System
- Tracking of customizations to ensure transfer of knowledge even if teams change
- Compliance where it counts – in the bill of materials (BOM), and in accordance with export regulations around the globe
Multiple Paths for Development
Wind River offers the greatest flexibility by providing commercial releases in two delivery models: in source code as Long Term Support (LTS) and pre-built binaries as Wind River Linux Distro.
| Freely Available | Commercial | |
|---|---|---|
|
Frequency |
BASE release in sync with Yocto Project |
LTS (Long Term Support) release, annual |
|
Lifecycle |
6–24 months, depending on the community |
10+ years |
|
Support |
Community mailing lists |
Standard, under Software License Agreement (SLA) Additional options available |
|
Maintenance |
Community |
Commercial, with predictable cadence |
|
Distro (binary) |
Download from the Wind River website; registration required |
Available in sync with corresponding LTS release |
Benefits include:
- Periodic new releases from both the community LTS kernel and Yocto Project LTS
- BSP support based on vendor software development kit (SDK) updates
- Support for real-time kernel when needed
- Charge per project, with no additional fees regardless of how many devices are deployed over the life of the project (unlike some Linux distributions that charge for each deployed device)
Wind River Linux Customer Success Stories
See how our customers are finding success with Wind River Linux and our award-winning support services.
Customer Testimonial
“The Wind River partnership is really important to Toshiba and where we’re going in the retail industry and what investments we’re making. They have over 30 years of providing safe and secure intelligent systems, and that allows us to work together to provide solutions that will allow us to create the digital transformation that our clients expect.”
—Fredrik Carlegren, Director of Global Marketing, Toshiba
Customer Testimonial
“Schneider has relied on Wind River for over a decade to help our engineers create groundbreaking industrial products more quickly while lowering our costs. In addition to Wind River VxWorks, Wind River Linux provides the security, scalability, and flexibility necessary to meet our needs for the Internet of Things (IoT) and help our customers access new data to transform their business.”
—Nicolas Letterier, CTO, Schneider Electric
Resources
Web Seminar
Learn how purpose-built embedded Linux distributions can provide the smaller footprint, longer support lifecycle, and high reliability necessary for the intelligent edge.
Web Seminar
Learn about the new Wind River Linux binary distribution, a purpose-built Linux for the intelligent edge.
Guide
Learn the basics about the Yocto Project and how it differs from other embedded Linux distributions.
Guide
Learn the basics about Linux for embedded systems and how to choose the right distribution for your project.
White Paper
Learn five best practices for mitigating risk.
Online Calculator
Calculate the expected and unexpected cost of technical debt to your embedded Linux programs.
Case Studies
See how Wind River Studio Linux Services has helped real customers achieve real results.
Development
Meet safety and security challenges in the development of innovative medical devices.