During the LinuxWorld expo in San Francisco, I met with Linux Foundation president Jim Zemlin to talk about the future of the open-source Linux operating system and the impact it will have on emerging mobile and embedded technologies.

At this year's Mobile World Congress(MWC) in Barcelona, while Microsoft announced its Windows Phone 7 Series this week, a number of other companies are announcing their new Android-based devices. The open source Android OS devices, which range from mobile phones and notebooks, to tablets and Internet Devices, include updates to popular well known handsets and several new mobiles.

In 2009, mobile consumer devices including netbooks, e-readers, tablets, MIDs, PMPs, and mobile phones were increasingly dominated by embedded Linux or the Linux-based Android.

My current work is mostly related to embedded devices. Many gadgets, like gps devices, pda, mobile phones, netbooks, etc. also run on linux these days. But, by no means, when I bought this tv, did I expect the following:

One area of open source that I struggle with is that of mobile Linux: there are so many competing and intersecting initiatives that it is hard to tell who is doing what – and who is winning. Here are some fascinating thoughts from someone deep within that world, Jason Whitmire. He's General Manager of Mobile Solutions at Wind River – once one of embedded Linux's fiercest foes, and now one of fondest fans:

The LiMo Foundation, a non-profit consortium of mobile heavyweights prepping open-source phones, said a host of global carriers will roll out Linux-based phones sometime this year. And the new crop of devices won't hit just the high-end smartphone market, but also lower-cost feature phones.

The headline act, if you will, was announced this morning for the third annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, and it promises to be an interesting show: the Foundation's Jim Zemlin, Microsoft's Sam Ramji, and Sun's Ian Murdock, each giving their predictions on the future of operating system they represent - and, I expect, the others' as well.

Linux is a great operating system in the back room. It is used in mobile(cell) phones, networking equipment, printers and many other embedded devices. It doesn't matter what operating system you use, as soon as you surf the internet you will be using Linux.

ITTIA, a global supplier of embedded lightweight relational database software, demonstrates its database benchmark leadership to application developers of embedded systems and devices, with exceptional results. On an ARM device, ITTIA DB SQL surpasses SQLite, an open source database, in three critical areas: insert, select, and update.