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136 Comments
- afx1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+135"After we landed in Orlando I talked the Delta flight crew into rebooting the entire system."
I can't even talk them into giving me extra peanuts...how'd you do that? - BasouKazuma, on 10/12/2007, -28/+152What a crappy title for a digg submission.
- cyn0sure, on 10/12/2007, -6/+98That is cool they use linux for their in-flight media. I hate to pop your bubble though lunchbox, but the "entire plane" is not going to be running linux.
- schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -17/+69Many airplanes use Linux as their Entertainment Center O/S, but it goes beyond this, e.g.:
Linux headed into Boeing anti-sub aircraft
,----[ Quote ]
| Boeing has awarded Wind River Systems a contract to embed its version
| of Linux into a new military aircraft, the company plans to announce
| Monday along with a new batch of products built around the
| open-source operating system.
`----
http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-6100043.html?part=rss&tag=6100043&subj=news
Over 30s VAX, Linux breeds Boeing's new jets
,----[ Quote ]
| Hawker de Havilland, the local arm of aircraft engineering giant Boeing,
| will retire its 30-year-old VAX system in favour of its new Linux-based
| environment in the manufacture of parts for the company's next-generation
| 787 jets.
`----
http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;1834585068;fp;2;fpid;1
Here's one about the media center (as shown in the photo).
,----[ Quote ]
| "Open source video games (and a future invitation for savvy linux game
| developers to participate in Red)"
`----
http://www.letvafly.com/VADIFE.php - OnymousHero, on 10/12/2007, -4/+55The flight control software is not going to be Linux based (assuming it is FBW), thats just the entertainment software. Cool though anyway to see Linux running on an aircraft...
/ Aerospace design engineer. - nfvs, on 08/30/2008, -18/+62@ilyag
Actually I find them quite organized and informative, and he mentions his sources. Looks reasonable to me. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -49/+90I've said it before and I'll say it again:
The formatting of your comments makes them annoying to read. - mraustin1337, on 10/12/2007, -2/+36@schestowitz:
Your comment was better than the topic. - protogenxl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+32PENGUINS ON A PLANE !!!!
- ThinkFr33ly, on 10/12/2007, -17/+45Right... cause the same systems that run the TVs in the seats are in charge of actually controlling the plane. Ya, that must be right.
Fanboy. - PaulOwen, on 10/12/2007, -7/+27@emitemirp
"On a 12 hour flight to Beijing, my personal multimedia system crashed on me 3 times! I was surprised the first time I saw that Linux boot screen."
How dare you debase the myopically utopian open source Digg community with your "Linux crashes" lies.
BURN HIM HE'S A WITCH! - drjones78, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21On a sidenote, you guys ever seen all those little touchscreen video game consoles they have in bars that rediculously expensive?
Saw one of the common types you usually see everywhere reboot one time... was watching the Red Hat Linux boot up sequence;) - Konrad9, on 10/12/2007, -9/+27They wouldn't even let me get my luggage at the airport that wasn't my designated last stop, no ***** way would they do something like restart ANY kind of software if it wasn't absolutely required.
Oh, and if you think Linux doesn't *ever* crash, you are a fool. - zydeco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17I didn't say LINUX crashed all the time, but the application on TOP of linux that ran the entertainment system, in-flight movies, whatever. And even the best crash-protected O/Ses (aside from something military) will get wedged HARD by a misbehaving application.
A rock-solid operating system doesn't guarantee that your app is going to be rock-solid as well. Hasn't anyone out there actually shipped a program? - rohanch, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17... Microsoft
- MrEnigma, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19I was on a Delta Song aircraft, and the system actually locked up. They had to reboot it, so I don't think it's all that stable. I took a photo and there are tons more on Flickr.
http://flickr.com/photos/stolidsoul/305717420/ - Sanitarium, on 10/12/2007, -11/+24Give it a half hour before "Windows Blue Screen Of Death on an Airplane" reaches the Digg home page.
- emitemirp, on 10/12/2007, -9/+22Although everyone is digging zydeco down, I'll digg him up because of personal experience.
On a 12 hour flight to Beijing, my personal multimedia system crashed on me 3 times! I was surprised the first time I saw that Linux boot screen. On the trip back it crashed once. Just my personal experience, YMMV. So I'll have to agree with zydeco. - cmost, on 10/12/2007, -13/+24"I've said it before and I'll say it again:
The formatting of your comments makes them annoying to read."
...it also makes his quotations easier to spot...therefore, you should have no problem skipping them (and keeping your pie hole shut!) Nobody cares that you don't like his quote formatting! - wvdavis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11People who don't get a pun "drive me nuts".
- flippedcracker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9i used to work for the company that put that system on that plane. i did the quality testing of the system. it's quite an incredible system (when it works). and it's not a mini-itx system for each seat. it's a box that controls up to 32 seats.
- cpcouvillion, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11It's spelled haxx0r.
(1337 gr/mm3r p0l1c3) - heptahedron, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11"The flight crew thought I was nuts...but o well. "
Yes, and now the TSA thinks you're a terrorist. If a lightbrite of a cartoon character can create a city-halting bomb scare, I'm sure that asking about a plane's electronics could earn someone a one-way free trip to the No Fly List zone.
I sincerely hope they don't over react and think you are a dangerous computer hAcKeR. - anonymousabe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7nice. i just became a linux user and i am dual booting windows xp and ubuntu 6.10. I have the Beryl desktop manager installed and it is absolutely amazing. I wish I had tried linux sooner. i'm a new linux fan.
- JonForTheWin, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10None of those are crashes. That's what the screen looks like when the kernel and init do their thing.
You see those because the system's rebooted, most likely, because the software that runs ON TOP of Linux (which is not Linux) crashed. And it's not like an employee can go up to these screens attach a keyboard clean up the mess this user-land program may have made then start it up again . . so, they're going to reboot these things which is the only thing they even know. - Lane5slacker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I had a system like that on my flight to Luxembourg. Except that ALWAYS had that reboot because the damned thing crashed and froze right after takeoff and the idiotic flight attendance didn't know how to fix it. Luckily, I had my thick copy of The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy to keep me entertained for the rest of the (long) flight.
- Ratteler, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Great. No let's get that Adobe CS2 suite on it so I dump Windows for ever.
- Ibanezfoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7What do you mean the plane won't ever crash? How do you know this? I've seen images of kernel panics on airplanes.... but that still doesn't answer why a plane won't crash just because it runs Linux.
I run Linux on two racks full of servers... hard drives still fail, fans still jam up, and servers crash... - fishfishfish, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I flew to Brazil a few years ago and was delighted to find that the in flight entertainment was one of these Linux-based machines. You could select from a number of different movies, play games and see where you were over the Atlantic. It didn't crash once, and kind of made up for the ***** food and lack of legroom.
- tasiefer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Standard Linux (or any Windows or Unix-based OS for that matter) will never be part of a critical function in the cockpit. The FAA's standard for software certification is covered by a set of guidelines referred to as RTCA DO-178B. It lays out 4 tiers of software from the most critical (Level A) to the least critical (Level D). There's also a non-existent 5th tier for functionality that is absolutely non-critical that is informally called Level E (at least at my company). The only way for a standard "off-the-shelf" OS to get on a plane is to be Level E, such as this system.
Almost everything in the cockpit is Level D or higher, and as such must go through an unbelievable amount of testing and certification. At Level A, such as for a cockpit display, some small, quick examples of the testing include 100% structural code coverage, 0% dead code, and 100% decision-based coverage. Heck, even at Level C you can't dynamically allocate or deallocate memory at runtime. Since a box's OS is almost always certified to Level A, you can see why no standard OS will ever be used in a flight-critical application
There are, by the way, Level A OSs available off the shelf that are based off of Unix-variants. Probably the two most popular are VxWorks and LynxOS-178. These OSs can be found on many aircraft (and spacecraft) today. - MrSprout, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"That's it! I have had it with these ***** penguins on this ***** plane! It's time to open some Windows." - Bill Gates
- Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7@ThinkFr33ly: And to think you have the audacity to use the word "fanboy" to describe other people in a comment above.
Wow. - jsd8cc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3...Which is why it was rightfully marked inaccurate.
- nfvs, on 08/30/2008, -9/+12He's quoting a couple of lines from a properly sourced article. How conversational can it be?
Also, the "ASCII art" as you call it make them quite readable. - bmartin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I've never flown with JetBlue. Are they in the US? I've never heard of them.
I usually go with whoever is the cheapest -- usually Continental or Southwest. You're falling for the correlation/causation fallacy. There are a lot of airlines losing money that run Windows. - ckedge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I have a picture somewhere on a flight from Hong Kong - while using the UI it crashed to the console - but only my window did this, everyone else on the plane was still using theirs. Segmentation fault and kernel panic. Ah - here we are:
http://blacktower.dyndns.org/china/public/slides/IMG_3086.JPG
I'd better coral-cache that as soon as I post this :)
. - Ratteler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Doesn't work, or I would.
In fact, I just pleadged $50 to Crossover Office for getting Illustrator to run. - caleb4mj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Linux Community:
1. Use Linux on desktops and learn to support yourself
2. Stop paying per-seat licensing costs
3. Profit!
Capitalists:
1. Use Linux to build products, outsource support AND development
2. ??? (stop paying royalties?, hide from patent or GPL violation?)
3. Profit!
Well, at least its absurd. - jsd8cc, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Sorry, you're not the first: http://www.flickr.com/photos/milliped/116393699/
Still pretty cool, though. - elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Guys, please don't put real conversations as response to spam, if you do, then normal contributors can't read them once they block the spammers.
- DieselDaddy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4People that want their computer to "just work" when they get a new wireless card or a new video card or any other such thing. Say what you want about MS but they made computers accessible to your average computer user. Linux just isn't as user friendly for Gradma as XP is.
- storminnorman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I flew on one of those Song planes once, I got to watch that screen on half the monitors as it kept rebooting over and over and over and over again. thats enough to piss of even the most ardent fanboy. I was ok though, busted out my ipod video and watched my own movies.
- mobilehavoc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Linux Linux Everywhere!!!......except most people's desktops.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2how about some frozenbubble on those screens, massive multiplayer
- jonbritton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Why are people assuming something crashed? If anything at all goes wrong, is slow, is "fuzzy" or skipping in the *device's* display (the flight attendants have no idea it's a computer or what OS it's running) they flip the switch off and on. Their DVD skipped and they shut the player off. They'll do it as often as it keeps happening.
It's almost like they're not sysadmins working on servers with standard software...like they're average people whose television is "acting weird" and they're resorting to the same old tactics.
Why is this an OS flame war? I flew Song, this happened, and they referred to it as "the movie player." - Cyber_Akuma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Not really that surprising, many planes too.
I guess, when you think about it, its a lot cheaper and more configurable to put linux on the pc imbedded in each seat than Windows. And if they arent running on an x86 based cpu then they really can't run Windows even if they wanted to.
Windows was mostly designed to be a desktop/laptop os after all, it wasnt designed for specalized devices like this, although ive seen it used in some, but usually these devices either have their own os or linux. - fishfishfish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Do you mean QNX RTOS (real time operating system). That's actually made by QNX Labs, not by SGI - they make Irix, or rather did, before they went *****-up. QNX is pretty cool to play around with. There was a freely downloadable QNX RTOS available from qnx.com a few years back. Quite fast, but not all that useful as a day-to-day OS.
Edit: Sorry, Irixman. We posted at the same time... great minds think alike and all that. - irixman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2SGI made a customized QNX?
QNX is a company that makes an operating system -- namely, Neutrino. SGI is a company that makes hardware and software -- namely, Octane, Ind[y/igo], Origin, etc and IRIX (get the name? hehehe)
As an ardent SGI fanboy, I think you are wrong ;)
Hehe, fishfishfish, looks like a midair collision ;-) - MrEnigma, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Delta is actually making money now, their stock (DALRQ while in bankruptcy) is doing well, and when it's reissued in March when they came out of bankruptcy, should be strong.
- jusme, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2As this is my exact job at Boeing it's interesting to see the comments on here. In the interest of my job, I won't comment further...some people are very knowledgeable (the guy who talked about software levels A-E) and others crack me up with their speculation. In-Flight Entertainment is level E software.
-
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