Study Of GUI Technology Based On Embedded Linux

Embedded System is one of the most popular and promising IT technique now. On one hand, it is widely used in some special equipments, such as smart consumer electronic products, PDAs and industrial control devices, which usually have limits on hardware resources (CPU, memories and so on). And these equipments are usually sensitive in their costs and even require real-time responding to outsides signals. On the other hand, with the development of computer technology, an increasing number of these devices need friendly user interfaces. Thus an effective and reliable GUI (Graphics User Interface) is in demand to meet the requirement. In order to accommodate the needs of embedded equipments to GUI, we study the design of GUI based on the embedded linux system in this paper.First, this paper introduces the graphics user interface and the platform designed by our laboratory. Second, the architecture and the virtues of FrameBuffer, which is a general graphics Interface in Linux console, are introduced. Then the means of writing the device driver based on FrameBuffer is particularly studied and then we give an example by programming SM501 video driver. At last, based on the realization of FrameBuffer, utilizing the tools for graphic exploitation provided by Qt/Embedded and Qtopia, we designs and realizes the customized graphic user interface, which includes the establishment of cross-compiling environment, the transplantation to the processors based on ARM9 kernel, and the implement of application program in Qt/Embedded and Qtopia.