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FAA May Ditch Vista For Linux

Posted by kdawson on from the hello-Google dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Another straw in the wind: following last week's news that the US Department of Transportation is putting a halt on upgrades to Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Internet Explorer 7, today comes word that the Federal Aviation Administration may ditch Vista and Office in favor of Google's new online business applications running on Linux-based hardware. (The FAA is part of the DOT.) The FAA's CIO David Bowen told InformationWeek he's taking a close look at the Premier Edition of Google Apps as he mulls replacements for the agency's Windows XP-based desktop computers. Bowen cited several reasons why he finds Google Apps attractive. 'From a security and management standpoint that would have some advantages,' he said."

4 of 359 comments (clear)

  1. Will never happen by bleh-of-the-huns · · Score: 4, Informative

    I work within the DOT, there has been no discussion of linux or Mac replacing windows, the discussions are about not upgrading to Vista and Office 2007/IE7 due to inconsistancies with the custom applications, and much of the hardware would need to be replaced, not even upgraded, but totally replaced.

    --
    I came, I conquered, I coredumped
  2. Already there by gr8_phk · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Hopefully, they are seriously considering Linux regardless."
    FAA is outsourcing the whole flight services infrastructure to Lockheed. A rep from Lockheed gave a presentation to our local EAA chapter on the new system and it's rather cool. Each person gets a multi-head display and all the software is running on Linux. I don't recall the distro. So when you call in for a weather report or to check if there are TFRs in your flight path, you will be talking to a guy running Linux. It makes sense for the FAA to switch because they will likely want access to the same software. The only downside is that there will be fewer of these people, so you may be talking to someone far away who doesn't know the local area and local weather.

  3. Re:Google apps/security? by gkhan1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    They not only operate in the public eye by convention, they do so by law. Has nobody heard of the Freedom of Information Act? Virtually all data that the FAA would store on those servers would be public anyway, and promptly available on request from anyone in the general public.

  4. Re:I agree. This is a _HORRIBLE_ idea by encoderer · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes, the VBA/Automation is a big part of what's missing.

    But as others have said here, Google Documents doesn't even have Find & Replace capabilities yet. (They only have a "Replace All" option and even that is "experimental").

    This is the future, I think. I really do. But not today. Not yet. It's just not ready.