Programming microcontrollers under Linux can be some what of a complicated task. The manufacturers of microcontrollers generally sell tools and provide software to program their devices, but these tools are produced only for one operating system. This operating system is not Linux...

So what is a "PIC"? Well, a PIC is a microcontroller sold by a company called Microchip. That's the short answer, the longer answer is that "PICmicro", usually shortened to "PIC" is the brand name for a family, in fact a series of families, of 8-bit RISC-based microcontrollers. RISC or "Reduced Instruction Set Computer" describes the philosophy of designing "a processor whose design is based on the rapid execution of a sequence of simple instructions rather than on the provision of a large variety of complex instructions"[1].