Because of my job, I wanted to know more and was recommended this book. I've had it for a year and I still haven't finished the entire thing. I'm 95% done. The beginning of the book is fairly good and summarizes embedded linux. The rest of it, with examples it pretty indepth.. or atleast I thought. Reading about the GPL had some interesting points but I found that you can find all this information summarized better on the net.

Do NOT take this poor-descriptive book from bookshelf! Do NOT be cheated by the name of this book, it's my only comment!

A major disappointment - most of this book can be found on the Internet using any search engine. Save your money and nerves, and go to the Linux Documentation Project.

What does "embedded" mean? What does "realtime" mean? For someone with no preconceived definition of "embedded", this book could help them feel they have some idea of what it means to do "embedded Linux". For people with preconceived ideas, I think they might feel this book does not sufficiently address the topic. It does not cover all the bases by any stretch of the imagination.

The book is relatively light on content; maybe 150 pages of it; but it doesn't cost much either. For what it is, the content is okay, but I don't think anybody should come away from this book thinking they know all about how to do anything.

I guess I would say this book provides some information about the issues involved in running Linux on a PC-style computer which has limited resources such as RAM and nonvolatile storage, and could help someone with a hardware setup like that to get it going with Linux.

In the total absence of competition, this book is very welcome. It's got a nice intro to emb programming on linux, set of info sources, interesting discussions of things like configuring the kernel (with what you need only), linking methods--dynamic vs static, embedded toolkits. It's written quite decently, you won't have to struggle. The comment below about the book's exclusive coverage of x86 platform is absolutely true, and it may or may not be a flaw depending on your particular case. In my case it wasn't -- it just so happens that I'm only working with x86'es. I suspect a lot of people are in the same boat, probably including the author, which would explain this platform preference, that in general, is far from a given in the embedded systems area.

On the downside are a long-established set of tricks that publishers use to make a white paper or a couple of HOWTO pages into a book (and charge accordingly.) The book starts with a load of usual bs about open source, which, if you're at the point of using linux for embedded anything, I'm sure you already know of, and of course it's all available on-line for free, and of course, if you have at least one other book on linux, it's all present there too. The back, as expected, is padded by -- you guessed it -- the full text of the GNU license. I have no linux books that wouldn't have it there, it's a modern and improved (more voluminous) equivalent of the formerly ubiquitous ASCII table. Thank god the Cathedral/Bazaar, or any other pack of inane ramblings of the official linux gurus, offending the English language and common-sense logic with their philosophical lucubrations with publisher-sponsored impunity are not included; let's admit, it could be worse.

So, if the money is not a problem, buy this book, though I'd say its real price should be a half of what it is. The 100 or so pages that contain something of value will make this book useful for many people, and btw, not only to embedded system engineers, but to anyone, since kernel configuration can be used in any environment and is an interesting topic in general.