Friday, February 13, 2009

Graphics Solutions for Embedded Linux

http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9202043619.html lists some graphics toolkits/libraries for folks deploying Linux on embedded devices.

Here's the list of Free solutions -

Dillo -- Dillo is a very small (less than 300KB), fast, Open Source multi-platform web browser that's written completely in C and built on GTK+ libraries. Dillo's high efficiency and minimal library dependencies make it quite suitable for embedded apps. Dillo can be teamed up with an embedded webserver to completely eliminate the need for a window manager in an embedded device.

DirectFB -- DirectFB is a thin library that provides developers with hardware graphics acceleration, input device handling and abstraction, integrated windowing system with support for translucent windows and multiple display layers on top of the Linux Framebuffer Device. It is a complete hardware abstraction layer with software fallbacks for every graphics operation that is not supported by the underlying hardware.

The Familiar Project -- this open source PDA Linux project, which is an offshoot of the activities at handhelds.org, has collected together all of the key components of a complete Linux-based PDA computing platform. The Familiar distribution currently includes a Blackbox-based window manager, Agenda Computing's Fltk+ based PIM applications, an embedded Python implementation, system configuration and settings backup utilities, OpenSSH client and server, and a Debian-based ARM kernel.

FBUI -- FBUI is a tiny GUI that resides inside the Linux kernel. The key concepts of FBUI are that firstly it is small; secondly that it is spartan, which is good; thirdly that it is just another driver; and fourthly that drivers belong in the kernel, not in userspace.

GGI project -- the "General Graphics Interface" project is dedicated to development of fast, stable, open-source cross-platform multimedia API systems. Designed from the ground up with environments such as embedded systems in mind, GGI is fast, clean, abstract, dynamically modular and highly optimizeable.

GPE Palmtop Environment -- this project aims to provide a Free Software GUI environment for palmtop/handheld computers running the GNU/Linux operating system. GPE uses the X Window System, and the GTK+ widget toolkit.

GtkFB -- beginning with version 2.0, GTK+ will support rendering directly to the Linux framebuffer instead of using the X Window System. This is good for embedded systems and devices with limited resources, because it eliminates the overhead of an X server, while still taking advantage of the power of GTK+ and the large base of existing programs.

handhelds.org PDA support -- want to create your own unique Linux PDA implementation? handhelds.org is for you! Early this year, Compaq created the Open Handheld Program, an initiative designed to stimulate innovation and research on handheld devices that resulted from the company's "Itsy" pocket computer project. To support this initiative, Compaq created handhelds.org -- a vendor neutral website dedicated to open source handheld development. Not surprisingly, Compaq's iPAQ PDA is used as the base platform for all these activities and, consequently, a iPAQ Linux port is available as freely available open source software.

Matchbox -- a small foot-print window manager and associated applications, designed specifically for resource-constrained X11-enabled devices such as handheld computers, PDA's, set-top boxes, and consumer devices where display size, storage, CPU bandwidth, and input mechanisms are limited. Matchbox includes a window manager, a panel, a desktop, a shared utility library, and a number of small panel applications.

Microwindows -- an Open Source project aimed at bringing the features of modern graphical windowing environments to smaller devices and platforms. Microwindows applications can be built and tested on the Linux desktop, as well as cross-compiled for the target device.

NxZilla (formerly nanozilla) -- a set of libraries that allow Mozilla to be used with a NanoX server from the Microwindows project.

OpenGL ES -- a light-weight, royalty-free embedded graphics standard that provides graphics API profiles for a broad range of embedded systems and devices, including handheld wireless devices, automotive and avionics displays, and multimedia consumer devices such as advanced digital TVs, set-top boxes, and game consoles.

OpenGUI -- a fast, 32-bit, high-Level C/C++ graphics & windowing library/GUI built upon a fast, low-level x86 asm graphics kernel. It is under LGPL license. OpenGUI provides 2D drawing primitives and an event-driven windowing API for easy application development.

PicoGUI -- small, portable client/server GUI designed to work on many types of hardware including handheld computers. Like the X Window System, it has a flexible client-server architecture. Unlike X, however, fonts, bitmaps, widgets, and anything else the application needs are built directly into the server. This sacrifices a small decrease in flexibility for an increase in speed and a large decrease in size.

Qt/Embedded -- provides a full graphics stack, from the hardware interface to a full GUI tookkit. Although the API is identical to the popular Qt/X11 and Qt/Windows products, Qt/Embedded is not based on X11 and therefore it has substantially reduced memory requirements. Memory demands can be tuned to the range of 800 KB to 3 MB in ROM (Intel x86). Qt/Embedded is available as open source software, under the GNU General Public License (GPL), or can be licensed on other terms from its originator, Trolltech.

Simple DirectMedia Layer -- an open source cross-platform multimedia development API/library designed to provide fast access to the graphics framebuffer and audio device. SDL is currently being applied to a number of Embedded Linux implementations such as Microwindows.

Tiny-X -- a small footprint X Window server implementation for embedded systems. It was developed by Keith Packard of the XFree86 Core Team, sponsored by SuSE. The goal was to create something that would work well in a small memory footprint and, importantly, be robust in near out-of-memory situations. Typical X servers based on Tiny-X can fit in less than 1MB on x86 CPUs. The project has since forked into several projects, including KDrive, SmallX, and Integrated Tiny-X. 

ViewML -- a freely available, open source web browser targeted specifically at the embedded Linux platform. Currently, ViewML along with it's interface requires 2.1 MB of RAM, with a disk image of only 760K.

WML Browser -- a project, sponsored by 5NINE to develop a browser which will allow any wireless device to have WAP functionality. It must support multiple protocol stacks (WAP 1.2.1, http), in differing environments, using differing input devices. The browser will work with framebuffer graphics.

Xynth Windowing System -- a free software project to build a portable, embedded client-server windowing system. The Xynth Windowing System, released under the GPL, offers a lightweight GUI-capable windowing system usable in Linux-based embedded systems and devices, such as handhelds and set-top boxes.


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