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Virgin America Uses Linux to Entertain Inflight

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the slow-steady-creep dept.

anomalous cohort writes "CrunchGear has an interesting interview with the Director of Inflight Entertainment for the airline Virgin America, who discusses their adoption of Linux for the passenger's seat back computers. 'The ability to compose a music-video playlist is pretty cool and on the horizon. The READ section is also awesome in that it takes what is typically a bunch of wasted trees (excess newspapers, periodicals) and allows us to be more environmentally friendly and timely with things like news/event info/sports/entertainment etc.'"

9 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Ob by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wheareas Arab airlines use 72 virgins...

  2. Old news by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Delta and Continental have been using linux based systems for years. I know this because they ended up rebooting a lot and you get to see a nice penguin when it does.

    --
    Monstar L
    1. Re:Old news by alpharouge · · Score: 5, Funny

      On a finnair flight from Helsinki to Tokyo last summer they appeared to be running linux on the personal touch-screen devices too. It worked great and it was good fun watching a few flicks on it.
      However, about an hour or two before the end of the flight they started rebooting over and over again - they were running some red hat variant on 266MHz devices if memory serves me right. The screens up at the end of the walkways rebooted at that time too, but seemed to be running windows, cant remember what variant though.

      After ten minutes of rebooting I was secretly hoping the stewardesses would make an announcement to ask if there was a systems engineer on the plane... :)

    2. Re:Old news by Idiomatick · · Score: 4, Funny

      You kidding? He lets anyone and everyone see what hes hiding under his frontend, exposing himself like that.

  3. Oh dear. by Funkcikle · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why do articles like this always remind of those people who used to write into Amiga Format saying they saw an Amiga in some movie or television show?

    "It even had the A570 expansion next to it, but the machine itself was the A1200 which is incompatible! It was AWESOME!"

    1. Re:Oh dear. by jamesh · · Score: 4, Funny

      Doom? They should at least be running a flight simulator of some sort. That way they never have to ask "by the way, does anyone here know how to fly a plane?". They can just check the flight sim stats and tap the person with the best score on the shoulder...

  4. Virgin America... by spidr_mnky · · Score: 5, Funny

    Virgin America Uses Linux... Just for a moment, I thought this referred to a demographic.
  5. Re:that figures by Nullav · · Score: 4, Funny

    Associating Linux with a successful brand is a Good Thing for Linux
    But we already have people associating Linux with virgins. Hardly a contribution.
    --
    I just read Slashdot for the articles.
  6. Re:that figures by IchBinEinPenguin · · Score: 5, Funny

    But we already have people associating Linux with virgins. Hardly a contribution.br
    http://www.bbspot.com/News/2000/9/linux_laid.html

    Read it and weep bitter, bitter tears of envy!