Slashdot Mirror
Airbus 380 To Have Linux In Every Seat
jpatokal writes "Singapore Airlines will be rolling out the A380 superjumbo on October 26th, and a surprise awaits in the seat of every passenger: their personal Linux PC, running Red Hat. In addition to running the in-flight entertainment, passengers can also use a full copy of StarOffice, and there's a USB slot for importing/exporting documents or plugging in your own keyboard/mouse. Screen size is 10.6" (1280x768) in economy, 15.4" in business and a whopping 23" in first class (along with free noise-canceling headphones). The system is already available on current B777-300ER planes and will also be outfitted on the upcoming B787 Dreamliners."
Linux won.
It's not a full machine, but if you've flown Delta and used their in-flight entertainment machines (the trivia is great), they're using Redhat. I know this because I watched it crash and a subsequent reboot which was grub...
the kernel was a 2.4 version as I recall...
what a great way to spy on naive commuters
Penguins CAN fly!
Otherwise it might be a good place (or not?) to do some hacking things...
just wonder why there are so many anonymous cowards in this world....
I don't know how they are setting up their installations but I would _highly_ recommend they use unattended installation images and re-image the installation EVERY day. Seems only logical to me. Neh?
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
If not, I don't think I'm going to be leaving my laptop at home any time soon?
Last year in february, i flew from Frankfurt, Germany to Johannesburg, South Africa with a brand new South African Airlines A340-400 Airbus. Just after boarding, the cabin crew resetted the In-Flight-Entertainment-System and several hundred screens in the seats showed a typical Linux booting screen with a small penguin in the upper left corner. They did not use a spash screen and it was possible to take a quick look at the booting messages... by the way, they made a network boot.
Hope they secure these well. With all the business travelers it would be a great place to drop a rootkit. From the article it sounds like each seat actually has a thin client, which would in effect reinstall the OS after each user/flight which is good from a security standpoint. But with access to a keyboard and USB hub, it still sounds a bit more vulnerable to abuse than a standard kiosk.
Airlines are not going to put an OS synonymous with "crash" in front of passengers. Everything, right down to the lighting has to work well to keep the appearance of order. Anything else makes the passengers nervous and looking for another airline.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
TFA says that the systems run Microsoft Office, not StarOffice. Unfortunately, their video doesn't show any office software, so it's hard to tell. Maybe someone will hack up a version of portable OpenOffice capable of running on the systems.
Hasn't every single customer canceled their orders for these things?
u siness/03airbus.html?ex=1330578000&en=10af4fc9a19a 34e5&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/business/worldb
Why not put this system in planes people might fly in?
If you're going to troll, at least don't try to troll on something that's in the 1st sentence of the article text:
"Singapore Airlines will be rolling out the A380 superjumbo on October 26th"
With that many linux users on each and every flight, Linux stock should be soaring. Imagine when every airline passenger clicks the EULA and authenticates with a license key that doubles as their credit card number, WOW! Torvalds will be richer than Gates in no time!!!!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I love how slashdot ignored the Boeing 787 rollout last month, while it posts this insignificant bit about the Airbus A380 just because of the minute Linux connection.
The A380 has a lot of problems and issues. This is hardly the most newsworthy of them. Editors, please get some priorities.
While this is sweet and all, I really don't want to know the kind of power-quality all those system's are going to have on the power grid of this plane
to keep it cheap they will use commodity parts which means single-phase PSU, which means a hell of alot of THDi and an increased possibility of imbalanced loads (ie neutral current). Aircraft power generation does not have much headroom (each 3KVA of power adds another KG in weight which isn't good for aircraft). and since the local grid doesn't have much capability (~600kVA... with electrical actuation as well) the distortion from these PC's are going to have a biig influence on the system
nerds can join their own version of the mile high club!
Not according to the article you link to. That's talking about freighter version.
... welcome our new linux-carrying plane overlords! Wait? Wrong Meme? ...oh
They don't let you plug in anything, don't give you root, bash or anything that allows you to fiddle.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm a frequent traveler and have already seen the KrisWorld systems that were in place on the Boeing 777-300ERs that Singapore Airlines have. It's really just an entertainment system that runs on top of Linux and nothing much more. It doesn't offer more than what other in-flight entertainment systems offer. To add on, I saw this back in 2006, so the system isn't new. I wouldn't be surprised if they used the system on their new A380s, as it does the job.
Though, I have to say that my main impression of the system was ingrained into me when it crashed in the middle and rebooted with a little penguin logo at the top-left. This actually happened two times in flight. It makes me wonder how badly these things might damage the reputation of Linux in general.
Not by the engines. Often it is a small dedicated turbine in the tailcone. That way you can have relatively quiet power while you are on the tarmac, and nobody gets sucked into the engines, and the relibility is higher because they are run at lower stresses ( ie: never at 100%, like the main engnes do at takeoff)
Which part of 'and there's a USB slot for importing/exporting documents or plugging in your own keyboard/mouse' didn't you get? I'd like to know that my documents won't be stored somewhere in some temp directory, personally. Security is a real issue for many business travellers.
Tell me these are networked with the computer helping fly the plane. ;)
No, it won't "crash". It will "deboot".
Enjoy a few pics here. Incidentally "Song airlines" were the first ones Delta put these on. Song went out of business (there's a Frontline episode you can watch about it) and the Song planes were turned back into Delta planes. Now all the Delta planes are scheduled to have the inflight video stuff too.
Which would prefer to get flight assistance from: A bird or a paper clip?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
You better hope these penguins and the flight computer are on different networks.
When I flew on a Boeing 747 just a year ago, they still had the "old" SNES-oriented systems at every seat (think staple games, SNES-influenced controller, oldskool graphics), but from my sleep-deprived eyes they appeared to be used as thin clients to the usual Linux setup that some have already mentioned here (I watched as the console at the seat next to me, um... crashed, and promptly rebooted with the usual Linux startup stuff that some have mentioned above).
This could help with the uptake of ODF (and possibly odf compatibility in MS products), if enough people do their work in transit on these machines.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Surely, someone will r00t the terminal, take over the plane's guidance systems, and from there, the entire air traffic network!!!
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Lord, I don't know which would be the worse nightmare - being behind the guys taking full size keyboards and though a TSA checkpoint on a bad day, or sitting beside them when they try to use the full size with number pad keyboard on typical tray table.
Three Squirrels
This is one thing I liked about Die Hard 4 (besides Bruce Willis killing a heli with a car) --- the fact that they actually acknowledge that not all computers in the universe are connected to the public internet. I like how they had to physically break into the power station to hack the computers controlling the grid.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Yeah, right... when penguins fly!
"linux-carrying plane overlords"? Imagine a beowulf cluster of those...
Now mod me "+5 Funny", you insensitive clod!
Good, now it's less likely that someone will put a virus on the plane's computers.
Despite what is said above, the Singapore Airlines website doesn't mention StarOffice, but MSOffice. Using Wine maybe ?
____
nico
Nico-Live
see here (not sure if this is fake).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
If they are going to include terabytes of movies, they would do well to include gutenberg for those who like to read. Perhaps even offering a web server on board so that the book can be downloaded to the personal PC. Finally, they might want to approach one of the major e-book sellers and get them to port to Linux. This way they have nearly everything covered at a cheap price.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Don't forget the RAT, or Ram Air Turbine. If all else fails, it will power enough systems to allow you to glide safely to the ground:
"A ram air turbine (RAT) is a small propeller and connected hydraulic pump, or electrical generator used as an emergency power source for aircraft. In case of the loss of both primary and auxiliary power sources the RAT will power vital systems (flight controls, linked hydraulics and also flight-critical instrumentation). Some RATs produce only hydraulic power, that is then used to power electrical generators."
ot, but i love the sig
i guess they have delivered one of them to Singapore Air. But until they actually start PRODUCING these things, who cares what OS they use to show movies on their non-existent planes?
This space intentionally left blank
I hope there's actually at least 2, or some other way of making it possible to use a keyboard, mouse and USB flash drive at the same time.
imagine a beowulf cluster of these...
... can I get a keyboard without so many boogers on it?
But seriously. If they now start putting some sort of PC in every hotel room there would be far fewer reasons to even be carrying around a laptop. A pocket sized device like the N800 would be good enough for quick web access.
" . . . this seat-back pocket is full of core files."
... but is terribly slow. I tried it on a SIA 777-300ER from Zurich to Singapore.
Someone who reads everything I write but is still clueless, says:
Well, following your logic, now they have an OS synonymous with "difficult" in front of passengers.
That would be great from the airline's perspective. Pulling off that "difficult" and high tech thing called flying is what they are all about. I'd say it's easier to maintain a gnu/linux box than an airplane, but the one the passenger sees will instill trust in the other. We would all hope that the aircraft maker is lord and master of every line of every code that flies and that they can transfer that competence to the airline.
You might not have noticed but recent events have all played to free software's advantage. Secret, artificial and greedy are all very much out of favor. There are poison food, lead painted toy, wiretapping, voter fraud and scandals all contributing to a sudden outbreak of common sense. In food, Whole Foods and the like are cleaning up. Just try to give someone's kid a toy from China now and see how they look at you. State and local election commissions are looking at non free voting booths the same way. People are just starting to get angry about wiretaps, extraordinary rendition and other evil practices. In the software world, the greedy, non free way is failing in every way. You will see more gnu/linux because freedom, honesty, integrity and efficiency are things people crave.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...you've surfed pr0n at 20.000ft
this is probably the most boring sig in the world
On my flights from Minneapolis to Amsterdam and from Amsterdam to Memphis the in-seat entertainment on the A330-300 screens ran RedHat. They booted it and like others on here have already mentioned, it showed the familiar penguin on the boot loader. And something that got a bit of a laugh out of me was that Garden State was showing on them and they cut out the beginning scene of the movie where the plane is going down. Anything to keep passengers from thinking of a crash.
Yes but will it run .......oh wait,
LINUX NEVER CRASHES
/. experts, we know this.
We're
I would still much prefer to bring my laptop (all risks recognised). I can see how non-business passengers could use these, but I see no reason why business passengers would use these over their laptops. Laptops can plug in, and they have EVERYTHING a business passenger needs, rather than just some. And since it is StarOffice, not MS Office, business passengers will hate it. Plus, businesses would be worried about the data security anyway.
I have not flew as a business passenger just yet in my lifetime, and I would still bring my laptop even if they had these on the plane. I definitely plan on not using these until they make further improvements, like including the keyboard and mouse, adding OpenOffice and Firefox, and a good set of games. If I were running this, I would have the computers reset from network image before every take-off.
Lastly, why do they not have keyboard and mouse included? They could easily have very ergonomic touchpads/mouseballs and keyboards. I know this is not too costly for them. Nobody should have to bring a keyboard and mouse for the plane, especially when there is only one USB port (oh yeah add a hub is the solution? pathetic).
The purpose of slashdot is to just make comments. You are not supposed to RTFA or TFS. That's cheating!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
it was sarcasm. I was implying that they could have got more or less the same thing (fedora),if not better, for free. So many people still don't trust open source or free software and insist on installing commercial software, even when there are identical free versions out there. products like redhat are a necessary [evil] step in getting linux adopted into the mainstream OS market
Is this going to cause another delay?
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
Give me your average Joe User and I'll show you an XP system that can crash like no tomorrow.
I'm an IT perfessional. My computer is rarely off; I've had XP boxes run with longer uptime than some Linux boxes.
I, however, don't install all sorts of crap that Joe User seems to love. I suspect you don't, either.
Even FireFox isn't going to protect you from WICKED COOL SCREENSAVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111111111111.exe.
This plane won't crash :P
Business Class: "You can also access built-in Microsoft Office software that allows you to create documents....." How are they using Microsoft Office in REDHAT? Is this some Mistake? Or, are they using Windows Vista for Business class?
The captain, co-pilot and navigator have been outfitted with Windows Vista Supreme!
.
- aqk
F U
But will it blend?
Ramen
Having joked a bit about Windows Vista, I must say WTF are these snide "Windows crashes" innuendos all the time here?
/.ers are a bunch of whiny kids living in the past (excuse the oxymoron, morons)
continually sneering that Windows and the Antichrist Bill Gates deserve no respect.
I cannot help but get the idea that
Sorry, kiddies... I've been using Win2K, WinXP and Vista on my home LAN now for several years.
Win2K occasionally has a BSD, but as far as I can remember, XP-PRO has never crashed.
And Windows Vista, which I have dual-boot with Ubuntu 7 so far has not crashed
(but hey, let's give it time- gee it's only been up'n running now for 4 months)
But to use Linux, I had to install a wireless bridge- Ubuntu doesn't seem to support my laptop's wireless.
And I dare not let Ubuntu "go to sleep" - the system freezes and I have to power off/on.
Oh yeah.. the sound card doesn't work either. Geez.. Why don't you pinoqachole-addled a--oles go back to mommy's basement?
Oh. Sorry. Forgot you were already there!
.
- aqk
F U
"Airbus S.A.S. A380 and The Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner, when these aircraft enter service"
It is what he was describing here:
Also some airplanes have a small external generator which can be used in an emergency. If you lose lots of power from engines at 40,000 ft you often have more altitude and more speed than you need (depends on where you plan to land,) and if so you can drop both and at the same time get some electrical power.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
If I Wine do I get a Windows seat?
...A Freakin' Flying Beowulf Cluster!!!!!!!
Please tip the waitress, everyone - thanks.
I would suggest you have a good look at the %temp% location of a PC in a cybercafe to see just how easy it is to leak confidential stuff. Few are aware that looking at a document online means you leave a pristine copy in %temp% when you walk away..
Not in a gazillion years for anything sensitive, IMHO.
Insert
I should add that I'm currently installing XP Pro on a relatively high end desktop machine (dual 4Ghz, 2GB RAM). This of course gives me a very long time to read slashdot while I wait because it is still a slow process. The home computer operating system advocates forget that some of us know what we are talking about when we insist that some of the Microsoft software really isn't very good.
The 1990s called and would like their Win95/98/ME FUD back. ... XP it's been mostly stable. It will go months between every time I have an involuntary shutdown ...
There's not much difference between those releases, XP and Vista.
Everyone I know who uses XP boots it at least once a day because power management does not work for them. The widows web servers you mentioned with expensive hardware can barely make thirty days on average. Do you want airline customers to see a boot screen?
With Windows, you are stuck with a choice of an old OS that sort of works and the new one that does not. If they go with XP, they will soon look and be dated. How long do you think they could run XP and have it look new? Parts will be harder to get and reliability will go down toilet as the upgrade train leaves XP behind. You might as well recommend Win98 or W2k. Then there's Vista. The biggest problems with Vista involve media which, I presume, will be a major function of airline computers.
Non free software never really works because you would never have to replace it if it did. This makes Windows the wrong choice any year you care to bring it up.
Outside of Windows, you can use gnu/linux with cheap commodity hardware. It looks good and works well. Even you have noticed how well gnu/linux upgrades. That's exactly what airline passengers want to see, something that looks good and just works. Airline operators can look forward to giving them that for at least five years before they have to replace the system due to ordinary wear and tear. Can you tell them as much for XP?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I love this comment:
Despite the hostile shake rattle and roll environment, you know they mostly reboot when they want to not at random. Notice how it was not a big deal for them to oblige the picture taker? They knew all of them would come back up.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
You know the fucking big problem is that LCD TVs are now installed in the backside of every seat, but airbags are not. In-flight entertainment is nice, but your utmost priority should be to be able to walk away after the plane has come in contact with mother earth again, one way or the other. In case of a crash landing or overruninng at the end of an airstrip, you will have very little time to exit the plane (nominally 90 seconds) before the whole thing burns down on you, so better not get injured because it is difficult to get out that fast even when you are unhindered.
Similarly, in a disregard for safety, modern airliners no longer sport drogue parachute for braking. When the runway is slippery so wheel brake discs have no effect and the notoriously unreliable thrust reversers fail to deploy you are caught pants down and die like the poor brasilian TAM airline passangers just two months ago. A simple, braindead emergency stopping appliance the braking parachute is, could save the life of many people. Since it is onboard the plane, it works if landing or airstrip or in the field. It can help in-flight to stop a very dangerous flat spin. It would sacrifice just two seat capacity on every airliner to retrofit a braking chute. Of course profit is more important for air carriers, so it will never happen, because regular inspection and repacking of the canvas costs money.
BTW, the superjumbo A380 was originally not to get even the unreliable thrust reverser method, which is quite criminal, considering 550 to 850 people could be onboard in that monster. Yes, Airbus wanted to rely solely on wheel brake discs for stopping, but at least the FAA inspectors gave them the middle finger, so they had to retrofit reversers to the two inboard engines. Kudos to americans for that!
Safety first, so we can shoot him in the back! - (Low cost air carrier executive to an Airbus technical director overheard at a party)
I couldn't agree more.
I went on the inaugural non-stop KLM flight between Amsterdam and Manila some two years ago. They had some serious issues with their RedHat set-up back then, and I felt embarrassed as it was very much like the BSOD:s seen in many airports. Hope they managed to improve on stability.
I've seen the Delta reboot a few times. The crew was not amused ...
BTW: If I have forking over big bucks to fly to Europe and Asia from the US, I'd like something a bit more than Open Office. I can't even begin to go into how much OO blows. That's the subject for another flame.
I am a little worried that this is a result of Singapore Airlines management knowing something that the rest of us don't - namely, that it won't be long before laptops are banned from the passenger cabin for "security" reasons.
SQ is already the preferred airline for most business travelers who fly their routes. After this, they'll be able to lock up the rest, providing at least a usable means for productivity to business travelers who would otherwise have to sit on their hands the entire flight.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
May I inquire as to why selling software is evil?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
...off a USB stick? Cause that would be awesome. And if I could bring my own mp3s and movies too... oh boy!
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
That is just not possible.
Not only it is in different network, but also flight systems are based on different standards and not on regular OS's.
Other than play movies, what is it going to be used for? There's no way I would edit documents on it because it isn't secured. Play games? a) there are few, if any, games on Linux that I'm interested in. b) it won't be installed. c) even if you carry a game on a flash drive, you probably won't be able to install it or play it. Are you going to edit code on it? Sorry, versions of libraries and such that you need most likely won't be installed.
Seems pretty useless, to me.
And to the above poster who mentions the lack of an article for the B787 rollout... this is Slashdot... everything from the USA is inherently evil and anything without Linux on it filtered out.
Gentoo Linux! Pilot: "This aircraft is equipped with a video surveillance system that monitors the cabin at all times" CoPilot: "Any passenger caught compiling something fishy will be escorted to the wing!" Pilot: "We've reached our cruising altitude and should be reaching our destination soon. If there's anything we can do to make your flight more comfortable, anything that has nothing to do with Linux, let us know." CoPilot: "Weather at our destination is... DAMNIT how do you get this stupid thing to work?!." etc ?
The same would be required of BSD, Solaris or Windows NT, neither of which have hard realtime scheduling either. Only OSX might be able to be used in such a fashion without virtualizing, if the Mach microkernel was hardened w.r.t. its realtime scheduling behavior.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
When You Can't Travel With Your Mom's Basement, Choose Singapore Airlines.
they could just put it through an X-Ray scanner by itself, away from the clutter of the bag. I mean, passengers would have to take their laptops out of their bags, which would be a bit of a hassle, not like the airlines would care.
And maybe even have some kind of bomb chemical wipes for especially suspicious cases. Yeah, that'd work.
Oh wait...
You all have Oo.o and Firefox, so get World Wind.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It is a little known product called Wine.
Please tell me those economy seats don't use touch-screens. Imagine the fun of someone poking the back of your seat's headreset for 12 hours while they work on their PowerPoint presentation.
I was quite surprised in 2004 when my SAA flight booted to a penguin and LILO. Linux on a plane's entertainment system is many years old.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I observed a similar in-flight entertainment system on-board an Air Canada flight recently. It was running some variant of Windows. Quite "entertaining". The interface was not responsive at all, taking, I would guess, more that 10 seconds to respond to the touch screen presses. Then, after the lengthy selection process, many items were not available. The system seemed basically unusable. Kind of funny to me, because two of my most hated corporations working together made the most piss-poor excuse for a system I have seen in a long time. The system actually reminded me of that flash animation spoof, "Windows RG". FYI, I was flying on a ticket purchased for me by someone else.. I would never recommend or choose to pay for an Air Canada ticket.
*woosh*
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
"Bluetooth: new device found (Airbus A380)"
There are a number of anecdotal comments already about Windows/Linux media centers on planes, and how "robust" they are. Many of these failures are hardware failures - specifically, "Single-Event Upsets" (SEU), which are bit-flips in hardware memory that occur regardless of software choice. As feature sizes on modern RAM and CPUs shrink, their susceptibility to neutron radiation increases, to the point (which was about a decade ago) that operators at aircraft altitudes should expect some type of memory failure (CPU register, program/data cache, RAM, etc.) every 2-3 hours on equipment which has not been rad-hardened (expensive/heavy) or designed to withstand these effects (expensive). EDAC can help to prevent some of these errors, but not all of them, since software alone can not guarantee detection of SEUs. In-flight entertainment centers are probably not the first place the airline decides to spend all of their money - these systems are probably as SEU-tolerant as any run-of-the-mill desktop.
http//baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ is a site offering free downloads or online reading of all the books Baen has released on CD (which is quite a lot of them). The CD's are licensed for free redistribution, and while the baencd webmaster does encourage people to purchase from Baen and is in touch with the publishing house, he neither pays not is paid by them, and offers the books for people to read with no strings attached.
While I was hoping that WiFi coming to commercial airliners would make it possible to access the site while in the air, making those books accessible through in-seat computer terminals would be both satisfactory for me and probably very commercially beneficial to Baen.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
"While I would like to point out this is not about critical flight control systems (where I doubt any Linux would be certified as it costs a lot to be) and in-flight entertainment machines are OK to crash sometimes, the specific functionality is, probably, a win for Linux distros."
While the link below describes ground based flight control operations rather than in flight aircraft controls it is still pretty damn critical stuff. The implementation described in the article is impressive. From the article:
"DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH developed a radar data-processing system called PHOENIX, which runs on SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server for high availability and performance - helping ensure safety for aircraft across Germany."
Link to full article with video:
http://www.novell.com/success/dfs.html
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Happily running openSuse 10.2 with KDE/Beryl-SVN as my primary OS.
the picture link seems to indicate ms office./ entertainment/screens.jsp
http://www.singaporeair.com/saa/en_UK/content/exp
so which is it ?
if