2026-02-02 –, Atlantis
The lifetime of electronic products is no longer defined by hardware alone—embedded software design has become a decisive factor. Choices such as build reproducibility, dependency control, update strategy, and security configuration directly affect reliability, maintainability, and long-term usability, and can either extend or prematurely end a product’s life.
This talk explores how sustainable embedded software practices can reduce electronic waste by enabling long-lived systems. Using the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded as demonstration platforms, it presents practical examples of reproducible builds, high-quality layer design, modular BSPs, CI/CD integration, and secure update mechanisms. The session also introduces a practical Embedded Linux sustainability checklist that helps engineers assess whether their software architecture supports reliability, repairability, reuse, and long-term maintenance.
Designing for longevity is a shared responsibility between hardware and software engineering—and the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded provide the tools and structure to make sustainable embedded systems achievable in practice.
Embedded software has become a key driver of product lifetime. Unmaintainable code, unreproducible builds, or missing update strategies often lead to premature hardware replacement and unnecessary electronic waste.
This session bridges sustainability research and real-world embedded Linux development. It demonstrates how best practices in the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded—such as disciplined layer management, reproducible build workflows, modular BSP design, and automated validation—support long-term reliability and maintainability.
Based on research carried out within the EECONE project, the talk introduces an Embedded Linux / OpenEmbedded sustainability checklist that translates high-level sustainability goals into concrete, actionable design questions. Rather than focusing only on energy efficiency, the checklist emphasizes long-term support, repairability, reuse, and secure updates as essential enablers of sustainable electronics.
Lenka is an embedded software developer with a long history in the automotive and avionics industries. She has worked as a software specialist and requirements engineer for STMicroelectronics, Skoda Auto, and Hood GmbH. She teaches and runs several research projects at Technical University in Liberec and at Czech Technical University. Her main research focus is Embedded Linux, Zephyr OS, and other embedded operating systems. She lectures Embedded Linux development courses for the Linux Foundation Education and maintains the content of Yocto trainings at LF. She helped to start the Linux4Space.org project at TUL.