Good emulators for embedded Linux

Question

Are there any good emulators for learning embedded Linux ?

Answer 1

If you want to play with Linux on the Arm, you can play with qemu. That way, you can emulate, for instance, an N8x0 tablet

Answer 2

Embedded Linux is like Linux, but sometimes with the capabilities of a microcontroller. Learn Linux on a normal PC, then find yourself a PIC toolkit that uses a C compiler and learn the MCU stuff on that.

Answer 3

The Beagle Board is a good DIY development board/environment for learning embedded Linux.

The board is relatively cheap ($149) and there is lots of community support, and lots of open source projects.

http://beagleboard.org/

Answer 4

It actually depends on what you mean by embedded Linux. Embedded Linux can be :

• A normal (desktop distro) headless Linux on Intel Atom or any x86, you can use any PC or VM as an emulator.
• A distro on a non-x86 platform such as ARM you can use ARM VM or you can purchase a RasberryPi for so cheap. Here you learn Cross-compilation.
• If you mean learning device driver, then you can use a dummy device driver and practice that first.
• Linux with real-time kernel
• and much more.

My advice: get a RasberryPi and try to copy some project to get the feel of cross compilation and dealing directly with hardware. Or just simply use VM learn the interaction with all the Linux component.