We hear quite a bit of talk about applications that are being built to work on all sorts of formats and operating systems such as Android (News – Alert), Windows, Apple and Chrome. HTML5 has been a leading way in which developers have been able to design their applications to fit all of these different formats, but there is one OS that seems to get left out of the discussion a little too often. Linux is one of the world’s most popular operating systems, especially when you are talking about the business world. Embedded Linux applications have started to see a real proliferation over the last few years and its time that was talked about a bit more.

Linux developers have turned to embedded applications as a way to try and hit the mainstream. “We build upon existing frameworks and just extend with our hardware abstraction and with an application for user interaction,” said Jan-Simon Moeller, a Linux Foundation (News – Alert) trainer in embedded Linux. 

In the long run, what everyone in this area is looking for is a way to come up with a framework that will work in all platforms. While HTML5 has long been though the silver bullet to issues like this, there are limitations that have people stopping just short of saying that this will solve all their problems. There is quite a bit of promise when it comes to this programming language but there are also challenges, such as security and standardization.

While HTML5 has been one language people have been leaning on, Qt is another that is becoming more popular by the minute. Those who swear by Qt say that you can easily develop hybrid applications that can actually leverage the best of both worlds between web and native apps.

HTML5 and Qt are both still a ways away from solving the cross-platform problem, but they both seem to be taking steps in the right direction. If Linux, Windows, Android and Apple (News – Alert) are eventually going to be able to run the same apps, it seems one or both of these technologies will have a hand in it.