FreeRTOS, as the most widely used RTOS in the market, has been the developer’s first choice due to its superior performance and permissive open-source terms.Since Microsoft made ThreadX open-source and free for commercial use at the end of 2023 (hosted by the Eclipse Foundation), it quickly attracted a large number of developers and rapidly captured the market.Zephyr, which is part of the Linux Foundation, shares the same underlying design philosophy as Linux (such as device trees, Kconfig configuration management, etc.).Compared to Linux, Zephyr is more lightweight and can run on resource-constrained small MCU devices, complementing Linux and gaining popularity among Linux developers.However, the Linux-like design philosophy of Zephyr is both an advantage and a disadvantage; it excels in software architecture but suffers from performance reduction. The release of Zephyr 4.1 is impressive, as its main RTOS performance surprisingly exceeds that of FreeRTOS.Although Zephyr’s performance is still not as outstanding as ThreadX, its excellent software architecture combined with decent RTOS performance is what makes it most appealing.
➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵Ultimately, regardless of the multitasking system, the choice should be based on needs; discussions that deviate from requirements are somewhat disingenuous. Sometimes the debate arises not because you are right and I am wrong, but because your viewpoint differs from mine.As for coding ability, the level of engineers within the system is what we should focus on.
