Wind River has released Wind River Linux LTS21, advancing to Linux LTS 5.10, Yocto Project 3.3, and Qt 5.15.2. New features include a Linux Assembly Tool for image creation and a pre-built binary distribution.

We last heard from Wind River in Feb. 2020 when the company released an unnamed version of Wind River Linux that added an optional CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous delivery) model with more frequent updates, among other features. The company, which also offers the VxWorks RTOS, has now released Wind River Linux Long Term Support (LTS) 21, featuring a new Linux Assembly Tool and an option for a pre-built binary distribution.

Wind River is a hardened, full-featured, commercial Linux distribution based primarily on open source code such as Yocto Project. The distro provides “a complete Linux development platform for embedded device development” with toolchain, tools, and thousands of packages aimed at applications including telecommunications, networking, aerospace, defense, industrial, and consumer.

Wind River Linux LTS21 comes with the latest Linux LTS 5.10 Kernel, which will be maintained through 2026. The release upgrades to Yocto Project 3.3 “Hardknott”, which was released in April. Other upgrades include Qt 5.15.2, as well as Docker 19.03 and gcc 10.2.x.

The new Linux Assembly Tool is designed for image management tasks such as building and publishing RPM packages, generating images from package feeds for specific hardware, and generating an updated SDK. In addition, “you can add or remove packages, and specify any pre- and post-build instructions for the build,” says Wind River.

A related new feature is a pre-built binary distribution, which “allows for dramatically faster prototyping of embedded systems Linux OS by eliminating the need to build the entire OS from source,” says the one-time Intel subsidiary. “With the Linux Assembly Tool, the binary distribution allows the creation of a customized embedded OS in as little as an hour, compared to more than a day.”

The LTS21 release provides new TensorFlow support and coming up soon in LTS21 RCPL new Intel OpenVINO support. Other features include enhanced OSTree support, a new “chrony” replacement for NTP, and “full enablement” for Wind River Workbench. Hardware support includes Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, Intel Tiger Lake and Ice Lake-SP, and NXP LS1028A, i.MX7, i.MX8 QuadMax, and SP32G. There is also support for Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC, among others.

 
Further information

Wind River Linux Long Term Support 21 is available now with pricing undisclosed. More information may be found in Wind River’s LTS21 announcement and product page.