Yes Linux has a tremendous existing embedded footprint across a number of interesting minimally specced devices.
You (and everyone) should care because of the ever expanding internet of things movement connecting these devices up to the rest of the computing universe. This represents a brand new frontier for attack surfaces and if the kernel cannot provide foundational entropy there's no plausible security story for the rest of the stack.
The cynic would be quick to point out that IoT is a nitemare anyway and even if the kernel gives the tools the manufacturer needs to use them and use them in the right way.
I’d be more convinced by an example of a 10c microprocessor that can run Linux. Obviously it sounds better to support everything, but there also are (and should be) bounds to what Linux should try to support.
You (and everyone) should care because of the ever expanding internet of things movement connecting these devices up to the rest of the computing universe. This represents a brand new frontier for attack surfaces and if the kernel cannot provide foundational entropy there's no plausible security story for the rest of the stack.
The cynic would be quick to point out that IoT is a nitemare anyway and even if the kernel gives the tools the manufacturer needs to use them and use them in the right way.