[catlin101]

Hm, i'm a bit skeptical about the idea of putting linux, java, or anything more complicated than whats currently on the controller.

The main problem is that many people have trouble tryin to get the most simple systems to work, systems that wouldnt benifit at all by multithreading or object orientation.

Like a few people said, FIRST provides all the calls that are "operating systemish" like memory allocation. I don't think that adding linux would really give you capabilities that are that much greater than the current system.

Its true that the vision systems didnt really work this year... but thats more a consequence of algorithms and not computing power.

Don't get me wrong, I like linux, but I just don't think that it would really provide anything beyond what the controllers already have.

If you do want linux, I think it would be a better idea just to integrate it onto the controller with an embedded 32 bit processor rather than a mac mini or something-- freescale and some other companies make a wider variety of 32 bit microcontrollers that are about 500 mhz, have a few megs of ram, and have linux ported to them already