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

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

[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)

[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://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/  http://www.flightgear.org
> Unique text: 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
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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