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

Delta/Song already uses Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

FWIW

[The Living Fractal]

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?

Re:FWIW

[modecx]

Why not have a single server, and have the client heads netboot off of the server after every flight? That way, it makes it super simple to push updates, kills the chance of having people permanently mess with the systems, and everyone is happy.

This is not the first Airbus with Linux

[S.Gleissner]

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.

Re:Dedicated turbine

[tftp]

Usually each engine has a primary generator that is powering the airplane's circuits. This ensures that an engine failure (or shutdown) does not turn the entire airplane off, but only reduces the available power. An airplane needs an awful amount of electricity to fly; even your common strobe lights, mandatory in flight, consume kilowatts, and the landing lights are usually more powerful and must be on during the landing. But there is plenty of more important hardware on board, such as engine and flight control, navigation, radio, deicing, gear, fire suppression, etc. Imagine losing all power at 40,000 ft at night - you could be falling like a stone and not knowing it ... because of that every passenger airplane made in last 50 years carries some batteries, and if they are used then they only feed the flight support group (essential instruments) and only for so many minutes (10-20) because of the current needed.

Also many airplanes have an auxiliary power plant, as you say placed at the tail, it is usually needed to provide fast moving air to spin the main engines, but can produce electricity as well. It is started by an electrical motor, which is powered from the truck on the ground. Batteries may be used, but only as an emergency measure.

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.

But in any case, an airplane is well provided with power, except in emergencies. A 50W here and there do not count, and besides the main cabin's lights and entertainment are the first to go if a power source fails.

Re:In Singapore

[tgatliff]

This application is also ideal for Linux. Meaning, 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. Windows CE, at least in my opinion, does not stand a chance here..

In my opinion, the best part about this is Star Office. Eventhough in reality it probably is quite unlikely many people will use it, from the vendor's standpoint, it was nearly trivial to implement... That is the true power of OSS, which is over the longterm adding allot of functionality with limited cost.

Gutenberg

[WindBourne]

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.

Don't forget the RAT

[daBass]

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."

Re:In Singapore

[burnin1965]

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.

Doubt no more...

RTLinuxPro is shipping in the just released Gen4 EFIS/One glass cockpit from Blue Mountain Avionics.
"Airspeed, Altitude and VSI, magnetically slaved all-attitude compass, HSI, solid state AHRS (Attitude Heading Reference System), a 12 channel GPS navigation engine and the highest resolution 3D terrain available. There's also a built in digital autopilot with altitude hold and ILS capture, a full air data computer with fuel burn and fuel totalizing functions, a flight planning system and digital monitoring of up to 32 engine gauges. The built in flight recorder and the new flight performance software, monitors flights, engine performance and much more."

Now obviously this is not your average linux distro, but then there are many reasons one could expect to find linux used in a flight control system, one of those reasons is the robust nature of linux and its reputation for not crashing. That's not to say that linux never crashes, but in my experience crashes involve running questionable code, i.e. closed source graphics drivers and the games that require those drivers.

Re:In Singapore

[sortius_nod]

This is actually not anything big - Malaysia Airline uses Linux as their in-flight entertainment system (I only know as I managed to crash it while flying).

I suppose the big thing is actually being able to be productive mid flight. Until they start offering RJ45 sockets for me to browse the net freely on my own notebook I'm not going to be excited.

Re:In Singapore

[tgatliff]

The problem would be the video. Meaning, if you go with a thin client approach, it would be very difficult to get enough bandwidth across many devices to get at least the 15fps required... I suspect it is a blend of the two. Meaning, they have less powered computers (probably flash based) that drive the end user, and then a main file server the distributes the video data.

Re:Well, no wonder.

[dbIII]

Yes, but the above poster forgets that many of the linux advocates here are also responsible for quite a few Microsoft systems too and know from a lot of personal experience why you need backup domain controllers, rebooting machines at short intervals (eg. every week) due to memory leaks and the need to keep different services on different machines despite low resource usage - plus all the desktop hassles. They also forget that these long uptimes on other sytems are often on low end desktop hardware that has been retired from destop use and used as print servers or various other task - so the server class hardware argument does not carry.

There's too big a difference between stability over a eight hour period on a single user system that gets shut down nightly and other machines - hence the 2003 version and even 2000 version instead of XP.

Long uptimes have a suprising downside - I always forget how long it takes Solaris to boot and get nervous staring at a blank screen for a long time every time I start it - once every year (we don't need it over Christmas so it goes down for a week). An uptime of a year is no major accomplisment for any decent operating system. That is what people in the last decade or two mean by computer stability - and Microsoft software despite all it's advantages and improvements is just not playing in that game at all. They got to where they are by being cheap enough and just good enough. It gave us what is really the Microsoft PC instead of the IBM PC, which makes me grateful that I can effectively put a relatively inexpensive more powerful version of games machines into a rack to make up a processing cluster instead of something expensive from Sun or IBM.

Do they know something we don't?

[raju1kabir]

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.

But can it run MAME...

[FauxReal]

...off a USB stick? Cause that would be awesome. And if I could bring my own mp3s and movies too... oh boy!