Name: Yocto or Debian for Your Embedded System? Yes. - Alan Martinovic, Northern.tech
Start: 2025-08-27T16:20:00+0200
End: 2025-08-27T17:00:00+0200

25-27, August 2025
Amsterdam, Netherlands
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Note: The schedule is subject to change.

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Wednesday August 27, 2025 16:20 - 17:00 CEST

D201

Many embedded products start with a stock Debian image. It’s quick to get started and familiar from laptop installations, but what works for prototyping becomes a liability as the product matures. A stock installation created directly on the device—by clicking through menus and tweaking settings at runtime—gets frozen into a fragile “golden image” that breaks as soon as you need reproducibility or more than a few people work on the device.

On the other hand, Yocto gives you full control—down to the exact version of systemd or how 'ls' gets built... even when you don't want to. It’s powerful, but comes with a steep learning curve, long build times, and complexity that feels overwhelming in the early stages of development.

This talk is about a third approach. By reusing prebuilt Debian packages, you can assemble a custom OS without relying on the golden image or Yocto. We’ll look at how this model works and show hands-on examples of building minimal images with several tools and how it compares to the other two approaches.

Speakers

Alan Martinovic

Senior Customer Engineer, Northern.tech

I've been working with embedded Linux for over 10 years, covering everything from low-level systems to full product experiences and customer-facing work. These days, I help teams handle device lifecycle challenges and roll out OTA updates. Along the way, I've worked with a bunch of... Read More →

Wednesday August 27, 2025 16:20 - 17:00 CEST
D201

Embedded Linux Conference

Audience Experience Level Intermediate

Open Source Summit Europe 2025

Alan Martinovic

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