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Linux Desktops Send NASA Rovers to Mars
joestar writes "It's not a secret that Linux has been used at NASA for a long time, and it appears that they have been using it quite extensively on the desktop. From the article: 'At the JPL, it is common to see Red Hat Inc., SuSE or Mandriva Linux running on users' desktops alongside Windows. [...] that's still a lot of Linux on the desktop.' More surprisingly, they seem to be reluctant to use Linux on servers: 'Our personal view is that Linux, period, is only for the desktop. We don't run our main servers on Linux, because there are too many flaws in main Linux kernel.'"
Brack's team instead runs Sun Solaris 8 for its main servers. He cited the OS's more stable, reliable, and longer lifecycle as one of the key reasons for this deployment.
That's the sentence after the one you are talking about.
... because they have such an *excellent* security track record with Solaris.
Well, okay, some of those are NT.
They mentioned Windows in the summary, so to head off the "so they use Windows servers over Linux???" comments, TFA said they run Solaris on the servers because they have found it to be more stable, reliable, and have a longer lifecycle. I'm not saying I agree, just clarifying a summary I can see leading to pointless comments.
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There is an aspect about IT at JPL that does not come across in the article. There are something like 5500 employees at JPL and there are roughly 3-4 computers for every employee. Now if you consider that most employees only have one computer, it is more like 6 computers for every scientist or engineer.
This means that we have a diverse and decentralized IT make up. Certain core services are within a particular group. But every engineering group is left to themselves regarding how to apply computer resources to projects. So the group that Brack provides administration for (roughly 200 users I think) exclusively uses Mandriva Linux (and only on workstations). While JPL as a whole uses Red Hat for most installs and JPL as a whole does not have a problem with using Linux for servers. In fact you will find almost every type of server OS represented (yes, even the *BSDs).
Having said that, our relationship with Sun is largely historic. Since JPL is run by CalTech we have always gotten that incredible education pricing on Sun hardware and since it ran so well too it was used A LOT in every sector of IT at JPL. Sun has lost some ground to Wintel, Lintel and Mac OS over the years. But it is still highly respected at JPL and heavily used.
I work as a sysadmin in Houston for the aerospace company that operates as NASA's prime contractor for ISS. We work very closely with the tech people over at the Johnson Space Center on the Station and Shuttle contracts and perform tasks for them that include large-scale analysis and number crunching (we recently handled the foam debris analysis for STS-114). We use a mix of systems on the back-end, but the breakdown generally is Windows 2000 AS & 2003 Enterprise Server for misc. (non mission-critical) application hosting and e-mail and printers and general office automation stuff, and Solaris or Tru64 or VMS(!) for anything flight- or vehicle-related, and dedicated mainframes for large (or legacy) tasks.
In my experience, it's a heck of a lot easier to get a minimal Gentoo Linux or FreeBSD server running than a minimal Solaris server. I'm not denying that Solaris kicks butt on Sun hardware, but it's a stretch to call a Solaris system minimal even if you install only the core packages that it (according to the installer) won't run without.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
When I worked at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center I saw Linux in use for desktops, fileservers, web servers, you name, it. There was some Solaris thrown in too, of course, and I think there was even a DEC machine (not a web server), but all the newer *nix machines seemed to be Linux. On the desktop there were also a fair number of Macs running OS X, and Windows probably had the smallest minority in the building I worked in. The only time most of them used Windows was when they had to make a powerpoint presentation. With the development of OO.org Presenter, I'm not even sure how much they'd use Windows for that these days.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
That wasn't a "Linux sucks" for servers, so much as it was "we have more experience with and trust in the stability of Solaris" for servers.
But they use Linux for desktops, where the market is dominated by Windows - which sucks.
This looks like ( mostly ) a personal preference of the engineers- but they get these x86 laptops ( or desktops ) and need to communicate with Solaris servers, so what would you run? Like them, I'd run some sort of Linux... more for the apps than the OS, which some folks might perhaps find ironic or something.
if bill gates' wife was admitted to the hospital and put on life support managed by one particular OS, which OS do you think he'd actually trust?
.NET experience) are a dime a dozen. You can outsource Windows development but it's a lot harder outsourcing RTOS development.
The answer had better be "Windows", because that's what he is going to get. I work for one of big three medical technology corporations, and EVERYTHING is migrating to Windows. Even your lowly EKG. It's gotten to the point that many realtime requirements are being abandoned because Windows won't support it.
Small medical technology companies still use embedded and realtime operating systems, but the large ones are moving away from them as fast as possible.
The reason for this is the same as other companies: when the CEO uses Windows on the desktop, he sees no reason why the employees and customers can't use it either. Embedded developers are costly, Windows developers (particularly those who claim 10+ years of
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Lockheed, not NASA, provided the Imperial units causing the loss of the $125 million Mars Orbiter project.
t ric.02/
http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.me
Most cubicles have a windows machines in addition to the others, that windows machine is the only thing supported by the CONITS contract. JPL mission control is not indicative of all of NASA.
Most developers I work with have Linux desktops and or laptops, some dual boot with windows. System admins around here seem to prefer SGI's, they scarf up many of the used SGI workstations as they get upgraded or bid on pallets of discarded ones. Some have Linux Boxes, and a group of them are using FreeBSD! I had a compact Alpha running Redhat until about 6 Months ago. Now I'm using FC4 on a AMD64 system, and I have a company bought powerbook.
Among the scientists it's about 65% Windows with Linux making up almost all of the rest. Windows Laptops were running almost 100%. But every meeting I see an new Powerbook on the desks. Last Science team meeting I attended had about 5 powerbooks and the same number of windows laptops. I remember 3 years ago I had the only powerbook in the room. Mine is still the only one that dual boots Yellow Dog. It's my uber geek badge ;)
Dunno...at my company, most workstations run either Linux or Windows (depends on the software requirements). The main servers are all Sun. There are "server" farms that run on Linux, but they are for processing data (running electrical simulations, etc), not really acting as servers, per se. The heart of the company's research and development network is all Sun. Anything that is mission critical runs on those servers. And the UNIX admins cite the same reason as the article did for using Solaris 8 on the servers - the workstations are all running RHEL.
-h-
Using Linux machines as workstations is not the same as using them as Desktop machines. You use Desktop machines for Word, Powerpoint, Canvas, Illustrator, Mail, etc. You use workstations primarily to run computations. Linux has widely replaced Suns, HPs, etc as Workstations at JPL. The article seems to claim that Linux has replaced Macs and Windows machines on the desktop at JPL.... this is false. Even the LaTex jockeys who don't use Office prefer working on Macs for such tasks to Linux.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
As I recall, I was one of the first there to really kick up a fuss about Linux, and since that time I'm very glad to say that most of the computational fluid dynamics code (ie: the stuff they use to simulate aircraft and jet engines) almost universally supports Linux. Not quite - the stuff for migrating CAD to grids and back isn't Linuxified - but everything else seems to be.
One of my really fun tasks, whilst there, was to migrate FROM Visual Basic to X/Motif. Yeah, sure, Motif wouldn't have been my first choice either, but I got the interface to work many times better under that than it did under VB.
About the only thing I really hated about Nasa Langley was their insistance on using rsh for all network connections (even over the Internet) and their use of
It sounds, from what I'm seeing today and what the article and others are saying, that NASA has largely come out of cryogenic storage and is showing signs of a fully functional intelligence.
Only signs? Sure. Donald Becker (who also worked at NASA) didn't just complain about problems with the network drivers - he wrote his own damn drivers, and it took a very long time for anyone to come close to writing drivers even a fraction as good. Nor did he complain about the lack of clustering capability, he wrote his own - bproc - and the supporting tools that collectively became known as Beowulf.
And the rest of NASA's problem is...? Sure there are bugs in the kernel. And NASA has a small army of programmers fixing inconsequential bugs in old Fortran code that has been in solid use for 20+ years. Let's say that NASA held a 2 month bug-squelching fest. It might still not get Linux to the point where Goddard or JPL were willing to use it on production servers in general, but I'll bet you anything that:
NASA has made a big difference to the software available for Linux (at least, if you're interested in moving objects), and in the distant past made a revolutionary difference to Linux networking. They could make a revolutionary difference again, if they loosened up on the distribution of their Open Source and/or got another Donald Becker to get some critical segment of the kernel working absolutely perfectly. I'm not holding my breath, but there is so much potential there that they'd be foolish to ignore it.
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I'm certified in AIX and Solaris system administration and I've been running linux on the desktop and servers since 1994 and I can assure you that is a ridiculous statement.
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As the quality of desktops has improved in the last 10 years, the lines have begun to blur a bit. But I think most people who have been paying attention to the industry for any reasonable length of time know the difference.
We tended to call codeweavers when we needed support with running apps on their implementation of wine...
We had payed for support, and recieved it when we asked.
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