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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.'"
I have also seen Linux being used extensively by NOAA in the last few years for weather data tracking and forecasting. I run a combination of Linux, Mac and one XP PC in my lab at Texas A&M Agriculture Program where we run a network of crop-weather (Crop Weather Program for South Texas) stations and an extensive on-line decision support system for cotton growers along the Texas coastal plains. The servers are Linux along with my desktop and notebook, there are four Macs counting one notebook and one MS XP machine to run a Campbell Scientific application that communicates with the weather stations. If Campbell Scientific were to offer a Linux build of LoggerNet I would not need the XP box at all.
I lost my sig...
Oh, really?
So explain this guy (www.top500.org).
this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice
The biggest issue anyone could have with Linux is that it fucking breaks.
NASA has this dead on. When you're dealing with failures that can cost millions, the 2.6 kernel is simply not reliable enough. Hell, if you're dealing with failures that cost thousands, it's not reliable enough... and most server failures cost at least that much for midsize and larger companies. Downtime is really expensive. And you're entirely likely to have it with 2.6.
We in the open source community have this collective groupthink that Linux is extremely stable. It ISN'T, not anymore. 2.2 was incredibly robust... in my opinion, one of the best pieces of software ever written. 2.4 was problematic but eventually mostly stabilized... it still has occasional issues with unusual hardware combinations, but by and large it's pretty solid. 2.6, on the other hand, has been a complete nightmare from the point of view of pretty much any professional sysadmin. Constant regressions, constant bugfixes, and they won't fucking leave it alone and let it stabilize.
It takes YEARS to shake the bugs out of a piece of software, but they refuse to commit to backporting bugfixes to anything older than a couple of months. They just wave their hands in the air and expect 'the distros' to fix their coding errors, instead of doing it right in the first place. So everyone else has to scramble around and backport bugfixes, or else adopt a pile of new features every couple of months. Then we get the bugfixes for the new code, along with MORE new code, with yet MORE bugs. Rik van Riel has stated, I kid you not, that's he's perfectly okay with only one in three 'stable' kernels actually being, you know, stable.
So of COURSE NASA doesn't use it on servers. Linux is not being written for reliability. It never was, it just happened by accident. It was ALWAYS intended as a desktop Unix, but it was so amazingly robust in its early, simple incarnations, that it was pressed into wide server duty. And instead of realizing why Linux became so popular, the devs seem to have stayed with their desktop orientation... and in fact have changed the development process so it's more fun for them. It's a nightmare for everyone ELSE, but now they don't have to deal with the boring, nasty grunt work of making sure the code actually works in every single case.
I can't find the quote now, but at one time, Linus said something along the lines of "Hardware is inherently stable; there's no reason why software can't be written to the same standard." But he seems to have forgotten that completely. Linux has turned into the Windows of Unix.... lots and lots of features, not so hot on reliability. You KNOW it's a problem when Ars Technica, one of the most competent geek websites anywhere, switched back to Windows for _stability_. The Linux dev team should be completely ashamed of themselves for that one.
I've been using Linux since late 93 or early 94. I put it into real production service in business in '98 or so, and relied on it for years. All we had back then was ext2, which lost data if the box crashed... but it didn't matter much because it never crashed.
That is SO not true anymore.