Flash and Harddisk

Embedded systems need not always be specialized hardware - even if many people will not recognize an old i386 in a midi-tower as being an embedded controller - this can be a very attractive solution for small numbers of systems, development platforms and for inexpensive non-mobile devices. The processing power of a 386 at 16 MHz is not very satisfactory for interactive work, but more than enough for a simple control tasks or machine monitoring system. The ability to utilize the vast amount of commodity components for personal computers in embedded systems is not unique to embedded GNU/Linux, but Linux systems definitely have the most complete support for such systems, aside from being simple to install and maintain.