RTOS options
Basically, an RTOS provides a deterministic task scheduler. Although the scheduling rules change depending on the scheduling algorithm, we know that the task we create will complete in a certain time frame within those rules. The main advantages of using an RTOS are the reduction in complexity and improved software architecture for easier maintenance.
The main real-time operating system supported by ESP-IDF is FreeRTOS. ESP-IDF uses its own version of the Xtensa port of FreeRTOS. The fundamental difference compared with the vanilla FreeRTOS is the dual-core support. In ESP-IDF FreeRTOS, you can choose one of two cores to assign a task or you can let FreeRTOS choose it. Other differences compared with the original FreeRTOS mostly stem from the dual-core support. FreeRTOS is distributed under an MIT license: https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32/api-reference/system/freertos.html.
If you want to connect your ESP32 to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) IoT infrastructure, you can do that by using Amazon FreeRTOS as your RTOS choice. ESP32 is in the AWS partner device catalog and officially supported. Amazon FreeRTOS has the necessary libraries to connect to the AWS IoT and other security-related features, such as TLS, OTA updates, secure communication with HTTPS, WebSockets, and MQTT, pretty much everything to develop a secure connected device: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/freertos/latest/userguide/getting_started_espressif.html.
Zephyr is another RTOS option with a permissive free software license, Apache 2.0. Zephyr requires an ESP32 toolchain and ESP-IDF installed on the development machine. Then, you need to configure Zephyr with them. When the configuration is ready, we use the command-line Zephyr tool, "west," for building, flash, monitoring, and debugging purposes: https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/boards/xtensa/esp32/doc/index.html.
The last RTOS that I want to share here is Mongoose OS. It provides a complete development environment with its web UI tool, mos. It has native integration with several cloud IoT platforms, namely, AWS IoT, Google IoT, Microsoft Azure, and IBM Watson, as well as any other IoT platform that supports MQTT or REST endpoints if you need a custom platform. Mongoose OS comes with two different licenses, one being an Apache 2.0 community edition, and the other an enterprise edition with a commercial license: https://mongoose-os.com/mos.html.
