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."

Comments

industrial espionage

[Ignis Flatus]

what a great way to spy on naive commuters

Well, no wonder.

[twitter]

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.

Re:Well, no wonder.

[Kjella]

The 1990s called and would like their Win95/98/ME FUD back. Most people have an extremely short-term memory (see: elections) and in recent years with XP it's been mostly stable. It will go months between every time I have an involuntary shutdown (but sometimes it seems to build up cruft so a reboot is necessary - a scheduled one is still a lot different from a BSOD). Unless you're talking to someone that got a machine infected by viruses and shit, people actually won't curse like they once did. It works well enough that Windows crashes are actually on the noise level of power outages and application crashes, yes they're annoying but you're not buying an UPS for it, nor are you switching to Linux. And please don't compare Linux server uptimes with Windows desktop uptimes, Windows uptimes improve a lot on server class hardware too. In short, they're both stable enough for desktop use, so figure out what Linux does better instead of using antiquated and mostly irrelevant rethoric.

Re:FWIW

[nukem996]

In this case it would be best to use Thin clients. It would cut down the cost of having a powerful CPU and there would be no need for a hard disk. Power would also be conserved(which is important considering you are on battery on a plane). To top it all of no matter how much someone screws with their machine on a reboot everything is restored.

Re:Dedicated turbine

[be-fan]

The thing you're describing is called an APU. It's used to start the jet engines, and to power the aircraft on the ground, but in most commercial aircraft, it does not provide in-flight power once the main engines are running.

As for scarcity, power isn't a terribly scare resource on an airplane. Remember, the engines are producing tens of MWs of power at cruise speed. Taking even a couple of hundred KWs off the main shaft to power electrical systems is not really a problem.

Re:In Singapore

[rbanffy]

"linux is best in computers or embedded devices where you need high reliability and you want to be able to specify the exact amount of the functionality it should have."

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.

But, in the end, I suspect the real deal here is about price. The cheapest solution won. It would be hideously expensive to have Windows Vista PCs with Office 2007 on every seat of a jetliner.

Re:Too bad no internet right now...

[Tribbin]

I think it would be about the worst place.

Pretty sure they are logging everything during flight and you've had a thorough identification before you entered the plane.

Re:In Singapore

[jaweekes]

I really wonder if they are using Virtual machines. The ease that they can be erased and start from scratch would be handy in that type of environment, and it wouldn't matter what you did to it. It would also help in isolating the network, so you couldn't mess up all the other computers.

Re:In Singapore

[Mostly a lurker]

It would be hideously expensive to have Windows Vista PCs with Office 2007 on every seat of a jetliner.

No question, there would be some additional hardware and support costs, but I bet Microsoft would make a very sweet offer to any major airline that wanted to subject all their passengers to Windows Vista.

Re:I always believed

[meringuoid]

speaking of that, you know how big of a bomb someone can fit in "their own keyboard and mouse"?

About the same size of bomb they can fit into a laptop. They'd better open up every one of those on its way in, and I mean with a screwdriver. One terrorist in a nice suit with a business class ticket and a rigged laptop = boom.