Embedded Linux with long-term maintenance support

What is Geckito?

Geckito is a tool set that makes it possible to create ready-to-use system images for your embedded, edge, and IoT projects. The resulting system images are based on openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise -- high-quality, rock solid, and actively maintained Linux distributions. Geckito can run on Linux and Windows, and it provides support for multiple target architecture, including x86 and ARM. Using Geckito you can compile the required software from sources, or you can use existing binary packages from trusted repositories. Using Geckito doesn't require any specific technical skills beyond working knowledge of Linux and Git. Moreover, Geckito integrates nicely with your favorite IDE.

What can Geckito do for me?

Geckito's main objective is to give you the ability to generate ready-to-use images with a minimum of effort. No matter whether you work in a Raspberry Pi-based project in your spare time, do embedded development for a living, or manage a fleet of IoT devices, Geckito can take the burden of generating images off your shoulders. With Geckito, you can use you favorite IDE to build images tailored to your specific needs. Better still, Geckito significantly reduces the effort of maintaining the created images.

Find out more about Geckito's components below.

Build Environment

pbuild is a cornerstone of Geckito. This tool allows you to build images, containers, packages. pbuild doesn't rely on any external back-end or cloud service, and the entire building process happens in your local environment. But if needed, the tool can pull the required assets and packages from online repositories.

Based on the popular openSUSE distribution, Geckito is capable of delivering binaries and sources suitable for embedded development. The toolset is designed to create reproducible and cross-architecture builds.

The shared codebase with the build script guarantees that the resulting builds remain compatible with the build results from the Open Build Service (especially for openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise distributions).

Geckito comes with a set of templates. You can think of them as recipes for building images. Templates can include the usage of pre-build binaries, custom RPM packages, container and custom application builds.

What does Geckito offer?

One of the main objectives of the Geckito project is to enhance stable distributions to accommodate IoT requirements. This includes an easy way to rebuild and modify key distribution parts, while allowing you to reuse as much as possible from an enterprise-ready distribution. This ensures maintenance timelines and properly reviewed licenses and sources.

The simplest way is to build for the native distribution using the standard tools. This can be done via the SUSE build script, the Open Build Service or just native tooling.

Windows users can work with the SDK via provided WSL images. These images can be used with Eclipse and Visual Studio Code IDE.

Cross-architecture build tooling is also a part of the Geckito project. It is available for application development, and it can also be used for package or image builds, allowing fast turn-around times.