Acknowledgments

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.^[2] It is with these words that Dante ends Inferno, the first part of his Devine Comedy. Though it would be misleading to suggest that writing this book wasn't enjoyable, Dante's narrative clearly expresses the feeling of finishing a first iteration of the book you now hold in your hands. In particular, I have to admit that it has been a challenging task to pick up the bits and pieces of information available on the use of Linux in embedded systems, to complete this information in as much as possible, and put everything back together in a single straightforward manuscript that provides a practical method for building embedded Linux systems. Fortunately, I was aided in this task by very competent and willing people.

^[2] "And from there we emerged to see the stars once more."

First and foremost, I would like to thank Andy Oram, my editor. Much like Virgil assisted Dante in his venture, Andy shepherded me throughout the various stages of writing this book. Among many other things, he patiently corrected my non-idiomatic phrases, made sure that my text actually conveyed the meaning I meant for it to convey, and relentlessly pointed out the sections where I wasn't providing enough detail. The text you are about to read is all the much better, as it has profited from Andy's input. By the same token, I would like to thank Ellen Siever with whom I initially started working on this book. Though our collaboration ended earlier than I wished it had, many of the ideas that have made their way into this final version of the book have profited from her constructive feedback.

I have been extremely fortunate to have an outstanding team of reviewers go over this book, and am very greatful for the many hours they poured into reading, correcting, and pointing out problems with various aspects of this book. The review team was made up of Erik Andersen, Wolfgang Denk, Bill Gatliff, Russell King, Paul Kinzelman, Alessandro Rubini, David Schleef, and David Woodhouse. I'd like to especially thank Alessandro for his dogged pursuit of perfection. Any remaining errors you may find in the following pages are without a doubt all mine.

Writing about the use of Linux in embedded systems requires having access to a slew of different hardware. Given that embedded hardware is often expensive, I would like to thank all the companies and individuals who have stepped forward to provide me with the appropriate equipment. In particular, I would like to thank Stéphane Martin of Kontron for providing a Teknor VIPer 806 board, Wolfgang Denk of DENX Software Engineering for providing a TQ components TQM860L PPC board, and Steve Papacharalambous and Stuart Hughes of Zee2 for providing a uCdimm system.

I have found much of the incentive and thrust for writing this book from being a very satisfied open source and free software user and contributor who has profited time and again from the knowledge and the work produced by other members of this community. For this, I have many people to thank. Primarily, I'd like to thank Michel Dagenais for his trust, his guidance, and for giving me the chance to freely explore uncharted terrain. My work on developing the Linux Trace Toolkit, as part of my masters degree with Michel, got me more and more involved in the open source and free software community. As part of this involvement, I have met a lot of remarkable individuals whose insight and help I greatly appreciate. Lots of thanks to Jacques Gélinas, Richard Stallman, Jim Norton, Steve Papacharalambous, Stuart Hughes, Paolo Mantegazza, Pierre Cloutier, David Schleef, Wolfgang Denk, Philippe Gerum, Loic Dachary, Daniel Phillips, and Alessandro Rubini.

Last, but certainly not least, I owe a debt of gratitude to Sonia for her exceptional patience as I spent countless hours testing, writing, testing some more, and writing even more. Her support and care has made this endeavour all the more easy to carry out. La main invisible qui a écrit les espaces entre les lignes est la sienne et je lui en suis profondément reconnaissant.^[3]