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NASA Gives Linux a Chance on Portables
ces writes "From Government Computer News Feb. 7: 'NASA will give Linux a nod for upcoming portables buy.' It seems Linux is on the list of 'desired' OS's for an upcoming NASA procurement of up to 4,000 laptops, some of which will be destined for use on the Space Shuttle and International Space Station."
IF U BRING LINUX TO SPACE IT WILL KRASH AND THA SPACE SHUTTLE WILL KRASH TOO!! BCOWS GOD HATES LINUX!! HE TOLD ME!!! SO DONT UZE LINUX UNLEZZ U WANT 2 DIE N STUFF!!! I M WARNIN U DOODS!!!!! DANGER COMEZ PHOR LINUX UZERZ!!!!
LATROZ DATROZ
MEMBER: TROLL KOALATION 2 BAN THA MODERATORZ
Nobody's making fun of you here. Perhaps if you asked in a nice way, somebody could help u with Linux.
uhh. he said the software was on their anonymous ftp server. therefore it is in the public domain.
If I remember correctly, another reason that 486's are used often in space are not just because they cirtuit paths are further apart that they are more radiation hardened, but it also makes them more immune to huge electromagnetic fields and since the circuit paths are wider if a very tiny particle (single atoms) shoot through the motherboard at a million mph, it would make a hole in the circuit path but there is a chance that it would not completly destroy the path. Try that with .13 micron =)
Uggg gee, of course not... Hell, NASA is the most well funded organization in the whole US gov't after all... They just burn money left and right. Can you believe they actually spent $165 million on that stupid Mars dohicky. That's almost 60 cents it cost you! And it didn't even make it! I say we start a campaign to get NASA's budget cut! I don't know about the rest of you, but I could really use those 60 cents...
I just don't know about this post. This can't be serious. That's obvious right off the bat. The only question is, should it be moderated up (funny) or moderated down (troll)? I really don't know which it's supposed to be. I mean, it's funny to me - but then, I have a twisted sense of humor anyway. It's bashing Linux but there's no possible way that this person believes everything that's written here (that's obvious from the first sentence) unless this person is a certifiable wacko. So it's possible that it was written by a Linux user intending to be funny - or that it was written intending to be a troll. I really don't know which. Any guesses? Ethan Baldridge -- The only reason I keep my MS-DOS partition around is so I can mount it like the bitch it is.
(BTW, don't blame the suit, s/he's probably a nice person who just finds it easier to play the game than change it).
Nice that they're including Linux options, though. *BSD might be nice too, depending on what their requirements (what requirements ??!!) might be.
yah, you spell "wrench" s-p-a-n-n-e-r Kid RockHead
This is excellent! It's great to see linux being used in situations like these...
monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey
cool!
This is nothing to be suprised about.. If you check out their anonymous FTP server, and look around hard enough, you can find some really cool GPLd toys.
w3rd up efnet #rit! Word out to all those space peeps like abbey, kron, theef, getupkid, xodarap, ka0s, cisco, and everyone else. werd up.
No way do I want my tax dollars dumped so nasa can have hot swapable dvd drives on the space mission.
My tax dollars should not be going to a piece of crap OS. At least put FreeBSD on those laptops. Maybe then they'll have a chance of not crashing. My gnome terminal at school crashed twice this morning, so far.
Yeah I can see it now, "The life support computer says 'Illegal Page Fault', better hold your breath while you wait for MS tech support"
Hmmm, I'd rather have a no company behind my OS than a company like Microsoft. (Everyone has checked out the 60,000 bugs story, right?). In space, with say, 6 hours of oxygen to spare, I think one would also appreciate the hyper-speed bugfix turnaround that comes with linux/open-source OS's. Besides, how much do you think MS would charge to do tech support for the space station? Bill: Ok, this bugfix will cost you $100 billion, because I need a new solid-platinum living room. What? You don't want to pay? Fine, just try to crash the station somewhere far from my house, ok?
Actually, closer to $750/lb these days :p 'course it would be something like $0.75 if NASA would drop the stupid so-called "reusable" shuttle idea and move to something a little more efficient..
Why the fuck is every large companies switching to a Gay Pinguin computing now and thewse days? HAVE THEM AT LEAST SWITCH TO OPENBSD!!! Are there any large companies out there that uses OpenBSD? Or I think it's not popular.
Geesus christ, get a life already... u don't really need to quit cherrin' 4 linux. Man I'm gettin sick of this shit. I feel sorry for u ppl. tis is gey as it gets.
He's done more for the world than your fat freeloading penguin ever has.
I'm not sure how the piece of shit Gnome is became synonymous with Linux, but it is your own fault for using it. I haven't had a crash in over a year, and that was only because I was using a devel kernel.
Geesus christ, get a life already... u don't really need to quit cherrin' 4 linux. Man I'm gettin sick of this shit. I feel sorry for u ppl. tis is gay as it gets.
I HATE linux, because mainly people on IRC actually flames me, corrects my english like every Linux pricks does either on the message boards or on IRC. I EVEN BEEN HACKED by Linux users since it's easir for them. And then when I tried to get Linux, I was forced to format my hard drive because they changes all my partitions. Same with BSD. ANd SunSolaris. I CAN'T get any of my OS to work on my computer. So there fore, I'm either stuck with Windows, or MS-DOS(If I get the correct tools to use the internet). And shut the damn up about my spelling and grammar!
Do scientist really care about the os? They want answers. Fine, if an application happens to run on Linux. Fine, if it runs on Windows, OS/2 or the Mac. When do you people realize this? BTW, the software for the Low Energy Electron Point Source microscope runs with OS/2 Warp.
Woo! The thought has little AC petrified, if ya know what I mean. :)
The science of astronomy, which was invented decades ago by the liberals to discredit the Bible, has always been ludicrous. But it just keeps getting more and more ludicrous. And friends, it has gotten to the point where we must all stand up and announce that we will not take it any more. NASA has gone too far this time, and they must be held accountable. It's bad enough that they invent "galaxies" and "nebulae" to trick our children into believing the universe is older than 6,000 years. It's bad enough that they attempt to explain the origin of the universe as a "big bang" that is inconsistent with Scripture.
.. oh no, they won't be allowed to. We will prevail. At the end of the day, we will be victorious, and the supporters of NASA and Linux will be at our feet, begging for mercy that we do not have.
Friends, this time NASA has aligned itself with Linux, and the godless socialists that promote it. This is not acceptable. NASA's lavish expenditures during the "moon race" were acceptable; we never actually went to the moon, of course, but at least the bulk of the money went to the American corporations that were helping to produce the whole "space race" charade. That money ended up in the pockets of the corporate chairmen, and according to the laws laid down by the godly Ronald Reagan, the money "trickled down" to the poor people and Negroes.
But this time NASA has gone too far. Linux? Christ Almighty! These people are all socialists. Things have taken a turn for the worse when government agencies can support socialism without even attempting to hide it. We need to elect leaders that will stand up for Christ and attack socialism and communism at their very roots. But where are these leaders? Are they anywhere to be found? No, friends, no! Not in any recent election year has there been a candidate worth voting for. Not since the 1984 presidential election where the honorable Ronald Reagan properly defeated the hellbound liberal Walter Mondale.
This year's presidential race is no better. When you've got rabid liberals like Gary Bauer and Alan Keyes supposedly representing "conservatives", something is very, very wrong. Sure, these people try to pretend that they're conservatives, but when it comes down to core conservative issues such as the death penalty for homosexuals or the criminalization of Catholicism, they are strangely silent. Why is that, Alan? Why is that, Gary? It is because they are liberals in sheep's clothing, that's why.
No more, friends. No more. It is time that we stood against NASA and the type of rampant socialism that it promotes. Linux, and its users, must be imprisoned. They seek to destroy capitalism at its very roots. They won't be allowed to, friends
Why would they use it in a mission-critical situation like this? NT is much more reliable for something like this. Personally, I want a product that has a company standing behind it.
this is good news that some govt agencies are finally recognizing the raw power of linux and that only linux is a valid operating system for the enterprise.
NASA has been a traditional IRIX shop and hopefully that will change as they see how linux smokes IRIX in every aspect. IRIX is unscalable, insecure, and lacks any enterprise/datacenter functionality. This is why they must move to all linux asap.
IRIX/MIPS is pisspoor hardware, very hard to support, and costs 100 times more than an intel/linux solution...yet the intel/linux servers smoke anything SGI has on the market today.
I wouldnt trust our space program to be run on anything but linux. its light years ahead of IRIX and other vendors like sun/hp/microsoft.
Linux is the future of innovative computing. GO NASA!
This is why people can usually safely assume that you're a Linux luser if you use GNOME.
what about BSD? coherent unix? AIX? SCO openserver/unixware? sunos? clipper unix? xenix? pc/ix? hp-ux? domain/os? dell unix? microport unix? digital unix? ultrix? unicos? xinu? tenex? twenex? rsts? rsx-11? esix? vms? mvs?
Yeah, I'm sure once they started using it they found other advantages.
:)
It's nice that Linux supports so many platforms, just like NT was supposed to do.
...and I'm sure being able to easily modify the OS is essential to some of the work they were doing.
But I bet if they could just throw money at the problem instead, they wouldn't have necessarily looked at Linux. I bet you could customize a version of NT or BSDI or something into oblivion if you had the money.
But this is all just speculation on my part, of course.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Linux has already been in space, but it's nice to see NASA using it this much.
:)
;)
I just wish it wasn't just because their budget was cut so harshly... Poor NASA. However, now we can say that Linux is truely "Space-Age Technology"...
(Isn't that term getting old? Or am I just starting to believe that "Information Age" bulls**t?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
In about 20 minutes you guys are going to be breaking out singing "All we are saying...is give Lee-nooks a chance".
It's sickening. Stop. This is not that big a deal. All they said is that they want the laptops to be able to run Linux, not necessarily that they are going to run it. Before getting all excited, RTFA®(read the fucking article):
"NASA specified a flash BIOS for updates and a plug-and-play operating system such as Microsoft Windows 9x, Windows NT or Windows 2000; SunSoft Solaris 2.7 or later versions; or Linux and other Unix variants."
"The winning portable unit with power supply and cables must occupy no more than a cubic foot of storage and weigh no more than 25 pounds."
Heh heh. This is going to be a "portable", right? You think those NASA-scientist weaklings will be carrying around a 25 pound laptop? And what is the cost-per-pound of getting something into space, like $10,000? So that means a 25 pound laptop would cost close to $200,000 more to get into space than a normal one.
You wondered where all that money goes...
Well. I don't think they paid DBs salary while he worked on ethernet for Linus out of charity.
NASA saw as far back as linux-0.9x that this thing may become useful to them and if it dose it will leave more room in the budget for a few extra spanners.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
IRIX: insecure? possibly; hard to support? sure. unscalable? Absolutely NOT.
Now, I'm not saying that IRIX is THE tits and beer of Unix but scalability is something that IRIX is extremely proficient at.
StickBoy
--- "The problem is not that the world is full of fools, it's that lightning isn't being distributed correctly." -- Mar
The computers on the hubble have to be able to withstand some radiation, so they "harden" and test computers for awhile, which means older computers are used. The stray radiation can cause problems with memory, etc.
Laptops currently used on the shuttle have to reboot everynow and then when they get funky, but you'll could always blame that on other things besides the radiation.
The traces on "modern" chips can't take the raditation. Errors all over the place...
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
No OS to buy, no apps to buy = more money for NASA to do research. Woohoo!
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
4000 laptops is far from large enough of an order to make it worth any company's time to develop a powerpc based laptop. Perhaps they could just buy the computers from apple (5 hrs/battery) and install Linux on those?
Of course, being a government agency, NASA could probably blow $20,000/laptop and just shrug their collective shoulders. The question would be would IBM be willing to develop a new product line for only a guarenteed $80,000,000 in sales? Let alone if they charged "market value" for laptops meaning $2,000/piece. $8,000,000 doesn't take you very in that scenario.
What do you mean, no support???
Just because the kernel itself may not crash as often does not mean that questions and other issues won't arise. Support means much more than "i had to reboot my computer"... if it were that simple, 1/2 of the tech support world could probably find new jobs.
Linux is free to acquire, but in a setting such as NASA's, it still costs money to maintain.
Emmett, you've gotta be really hard up to trumpet this. Basically, about the only modern OSes* that aren't provided for by the requirements are MacOS and OS/2. (Unless you consider AmigaOS to be a "modern" OS, and you don't consider BeOS to be a "Unix variant.") Even Minix or Xenix would be considered a "desired OS" under these guidelines.
In case you haven't read them, the OS part reads: "The laptop shall support the operating systems: Windows 95/98/2000, Windows NT, SunSoft Solaris version 2.7 or later, and other Unix or Linux variants."
How selective. Everyone rejoice.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
* When I say modern OSes, I'm talking about ones with a decent amount of users, not some obscure stuff nobody's actually using, no matter how great it is.
The traces on "modern" chips can't take the raditation. Errors all over the place...
Then, of course, they should be shielded. This is common practise in military electronics to withstand nuclear radiation...
"shall be designed to fit within the internal dimensions of 0.43m x 0.5m x 24.18m (16.95 in X 20.00 in X 9.52 in)."
Will NASA never learn?
They start with requirements in an obsolete system (Inches and Pounds) and then translate it into the proper (and required) SI for the official bid-form, then translate it back for ignorant suppliers......
They can't even do that right!, 24.18m = 9.52 in..
Bunch of amateurs, I'm glad I'm not flying with them or live under the flight path!
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I used to work for the Mars Polar Lander project, on its Ground Data Systems. One thing about this announcement is that its only making official what already happens a lot in NASA.
:)
Internally, we used a lot of Linux boxes, and even more GNU tools on Solaris boxes. In fact, the whole image processing pipeline was built using a series of BASH scripts by the NASA AMES team, as part of their operations deployment.
The web servers for the MPL were Solaris x86 boxes driven by Apache and PHP, while the support boxes for DNS and mail were Linux (red hat, stripped down). All ultra-reliable, getting them secure was the hardest bit of the whole operation really (we considered OpenBSD for a while, but didnt have enough inhouse skills with it)
And, to reassure you, no Windows servers were used for anything other than looking pretty.
Oh, and Quake III. None of the Linux boxes had 3D cards
Anil Madhavapeddy
Run NASA on W2k and launch Bill Gates into space.
Well I keep my machines upto date but I very rarely re-boot them. They get rebooted for the following reasons:
1. Kernel upgrade.
2. Hardware Change.
3. Power outage.
At work we have a few machines that are approaching 500 days of uptime so it just goes to show you, set up a machine for a specific task and if it works don't break (ie fool with it)
I love linux. It's neat and fun and spiffy. I can keep it running for weeks on end and update every two minutes.
And yet....
I sometimes feel that all it's reliability and stability is ultimately derived from the way I *can* continually update, recompile, and reconfigure. In other words, my linux box has always been a kind of work in progress for me. And I think it always will be. Despite all the stories of "I got an old Slackware Box in the back room, for three years collecting dust and serving web sites, as free as contact as a leper", I always seem to be tweaking something.
Is this really what we want in our Space Shuttle? I mean, upgrades, bandwidth, and experts aren't exactly as common as space dust (despite the radio show of our intrepid founders, I still think it would be hard to find a geek in space). We want to use systems that are set up to run as is-- statically.
On the other hand, what's the alternative? Unlike most other operating systems, it *is* possible to configure Linux and BSD to support what you want and only what you want. This could lead to incredible stability. Maybe BeOS comes close. So I guess as long as NASA makes sure we're not going to have a "Hey, I got the angband package, but it looks like we forgot the math and science packages" situation, I guess this is good news.
--
Lagos - White Rabbit of Linux
Muppet Show fans will remember a similarly titled skit.
Holy shit! I'm old.
I've finally found the off by one erro
... an enourmous portable Beowulf cluster!
"What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death."
The computer they installed on the hubble space telescope had to be freed of radioation or some crap. That is why they only put in a 486. I wonder if that would apply to the space shuttle? I guess that it wouldnt matter, but it is just a thought. Why do you want a ppc so bad? I think the best thing would be that new Transmeta Crusoe chip. That would be schweet!
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
I doubt it, Hubble is much less shielded from radiation than either a space station or the shuttle would be. Remember, people will be living in the space station for months at a time - it wouldn't do for a solar flare to wipe them all out...
--
I like this quote from the article:
.doc :
-------------------------
Adding Linux to portable computers was a challenge in the OS? early days because of missing device drivers and incompatible hardware.
But the picture is changing. Compaq Computer Corp. and Linux publishers such as Red Hat Inc. of Durham, N.C., distribute tips on running Linux on notebook computers.
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Everyone aparantly was sitting around wonderring how to get Linux to run on various hardware and Red Hat until Red Hat "Gave them a few tips" on how it was done. he heh. Speaking of device drivers my ethernet card driver was programmed by Donald Becker who works at Nasa and also does cool things with Beowulf clusters.
from the
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1.2.2 Software
The laptop shall support the operating systems: Windows 95/98/2000, Windows NT, SunSoft Solaris TM version 2.7 or later, and other Unix or Linux variants .
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Sorry, it looks like Apple just isn't cool enough... it's a pity really.
It looks like the Sony Vaio PCG-X9 that was the subject of an article earlier in the day fits NASA's bill quite nicely! I understand that Linux works quite nicely on newer Vaio laptops.
Go NASA! Go Linux!
NASA is definitely a great open source friend out there. We appreciate those net drivers too :)
sounding a loud warning before ejecting your disks...
or being able to display the screen upside down...
I heartily agree. Maybe even just use G3 PowerBooks with Linux PPC. (I doubt NASA wants to send the Neon Toilet Seat Cover into space. ;P )
I'm sure power consumption is on the list of requirements somewhere.
-Pope Peter Porker, S.O.W., K.M.K.R., U.G.O.A., F.S.G.S.D.
You said:
"If you check out their anonymous FTP server, and look around hard enough, you can find some really cool GPLd toys."
I hope you can give us some url to save us from the "look around hard enough" stage.
Any url, please?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
ought to contract someone to build them some PPC based laptops running a *nix. P3 and Celeron based laptops take up too much power in my opinion, you have to remember you're running these things in a very closed environment with limited power. My Powerbook uses 7 less WPH than a comparable Dell Inspirion, most of the difference is the processor. I bet NASA could get IBM to build them some since they have both PPC licenses and have pretty good working knowlege of both Linux and AIX. I hope whatever they go with runs a Unix variant, especially an open one like Linux. Linux would mazimize the hardware on the notebooks and allow the astronauts and engineers to edit it to their needs.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
JSC has been the site of an IT jihad. In 1996, the head honcho of IT at JSC made a push to "standardize" the IT environment. His decision was to ignore the advice to use standardized, cross-platform file formats and instead make JSC a Microsoft shop. This put the large userbase of Macs directly in the line of fire and they fought back. It became a long, drawn out political fight between JSC officials, the Inspector General, and Congress. In the end, nobody completely won. But Microsoft technology made some major leaps forward in seizing control of JSC's IT infrastructure.
Like with many other large organizations, JSC today is very much a Microsoft shop. It is a prime test center (read: Microsoft partner) for various MS offerings to include Exchange, SMS, and Win2K. But Microsoft does not hold all of JSC. Macs have made a comeback. Various Unix flavors exist to include Solaris, HPUX, AIX, IRIX... to name a few. VMS has always been in the shadows. And Linux is sprouting up.
Linux shows up as "testbeds" in various organizations. It runs tasks as rogue installations (desktops as well as servers). And one organization has even created their own dual-boot Windows/Linux standard desktop load. Furthermore, the ODIN IT contract has received requests from JSC "customers" for a Linux load.
And now JSC's contracting office has set Linux as one of its requirements for future hardware purchases.
JSC has followed the pattern so many other organizations have followed. Linux has gone from an obscure user-supported rogue installation to an official, sponsored requirement. The fact that this was done in spite of the direction of internal political pressure and the natural tendancy of these kinds of large organizations to resist change is a tribute to Linux.
OK, so it had Lea Thompson and "Forever Man" by Eric Clapton. But still...
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
I was in contact with an astronaut recently and he told me that some of the programs they run on the shuttle are still MSDOS programs.
Ignore Alien Orders
Combine Linux with the low power requirements of the Crusoe and... woohoo! perfect space application. No support needed and very little power.
Microsoft's new slogan should be "Houston, we have a problem"...
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Since Linux is one of several acceptible operating systems, they may or may not make the cut. A lot will depend on how well the OS meets the other expectations.
This seems the proper way of going about it -- define the problems to be solved, and see what is out there that can solve those problems.
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Computeri non cogitant, ergo non sunt