> We need more little systems that are somewhere between underpowered Arduinos and entire Linux systems.
That's not a lot of gap; openwrt is tiny and "embedded" boards grow more powerful every year. Every time I see a new board, one of my first questions is, "does it have enough RAM+flash for Linux?" and we're getting close - if the teensy 4.1 had a touch more ram it'd work (well, uclinux, but still).
It's not the hardware, it's the headaches. A Linux system needs a lot of stuff, which offers a big attack surface. Real-time OSs have less excess baggage.
That's not a lot of gap; openwrt is tiny and "embedded" boards grow more powerful every year. Every time I see a new board, one of my first questions is, "does it have enough RAM+flash for Linux?" and we're getting close - if the teensy 4.1 had a touch more ram it'd work (well, uclinux, but still).