Re: [Flightgear-devel] Linux in real-world aviation (was: FG and VATSIM)

2007-09-17 Thread Robin
Curtis Olson wrote:
 3. I'll just toss in this unrelated item ... a week ago I got to fly 
 on a NWA A330.  This aircraft had individual movie/music/game/map 
 displays for each seat.  I managed to hang/lock mine up ... apparently 
 because the map wasn't working on this flight for some reason.  So I 
 asked the flight attendent to reset the display and when she did, it 
 booted Linux of all things!  I thought that was interesting.

 Regards,

 Curt.
 -- 
 Curtis Olson - University of Minnesota - FlightGear Project
 http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/ 
 http://baron.flightgear.org/%7Ecurt/   
 http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/  http://www.flightgear.org
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Linux isn't FAA certified so it's not used for mission-critical systems 
but in-flight entertainment systems would be very useful on Linux. You 
managed to figure out what distro the Airbus was running? Some custom one?

I do know that there is enough FAA certified hardware on the market 
capable of running RT-Linux, and I expect to see some of that hardware 
bleeding onto the instrument market. The A380 already does PC-based 
systems in its flight deck, although probably not in its entirety. 
Programming instrumentation in OpenGL is the way to go, and the avionics 
manufacturers picked that up, look at the ARINC661 standard for example.

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Linux in real-world aviation (was: FG and VATSIM)

2007-09-17 Thread Curtis Olson
On 9/17/07, Robin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Linux isn't FAA certified so it's not used for mission-critical systems
 but in-flight entertainment systems would be very useful on Linux.


Yup and if they are running it on a couple hundred seats, individually,
there would be no need to pay the license fees to MS which would add up
really fast ... especially since they like to charge per potential user.
:-)

You
 managed to figure out what distro the Airbus was running? Some custom one?


My best guess is a debian derivative, probably stripped down for this
specific application.  I saw the debian penguin come up at the head of the
console boot messages ... only one penguin so it looks like a single
processor.  I don't know what the actual hardware really is ... I'd be
surprised if they had one CPU per seat ... maybe they were doing some sort
of virtualization?  Interesting to see.  Apparently my seat neighbors were
not nearly as excited as I was to find out the entertainment system was
running linux ... :-)

Regards,

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson - University of Minnesota - FlightGear Project
http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/  http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/
http://www.flightgear.org
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Linux in real-world aviation (was: FG and VATSIM)

2007-09-17 Thread Durk Talsma
On Monday 17 September 2007 18:41, Curtis Olson wrote:
 My best guess is a debian derivative, probably stripped down for this
 specific application.  I saw the debian penguin come up at the head of the
 console boot messages ... only one penguin so it looks like a single
 processor.  I don't know what the actual hardware really is ... I'd be
 surprised if they had one CPU per seat ... maybe they were doing some sort
 of virtualization?  Interesting to see.  Apparently my seat neighbors were
 not nearly as excited as I was to find out the entertainment system was
 running linux ... :-)

Funny, I had actually the same experience, on the same aircraft type / 
airliner on my last flight back from the US (Detroit - Amsterdam, May 17, 
Northwest, A330). The entertainment system crashed midway during a movie, and 
spontaneously rebooted, showing the penguin. 

Cheers,
Durk

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