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British Royal Navy Submarines Now Run Windows

Posted by samzenpus on from the deep-blue-screen dept.

meist3r writes "On his Government blog, Microsoft's Ian McKenzie announced today that the Royal Navy was ahead of schedule for switching their nuclear submarines to a customized Microsoft Windows solution dubbed 'Submarine Command System Next Generation (SMCS NG)' which apparently consists of Windows 2000 network servers and XP workstations. In the article, it is claimed that this decision will save UK taxpayers £22m over the next ten years. The installation of the new system apparently took just 18 days on the HMS Vigilant. According to the BAE Systems press release from 2005, the overall cost of the rollout was £24.5m for all eleven nuclear submarines of the Vanguard, Trafalgar and Swiftsure classes. Talk about staying with the sinking ship."

4 of 725 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Obvious reason by freddy_dreddy · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    That's actually strange, minesweeper is about the only piece of software on Linux that isn't broken after an update - well, most of the 350 versions of minesweeper on Linux that is.

    --
    "Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
  2. Re:Obvious reason by freddy_dreddy · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    You don't need to be an expert/consultant to evaluate crap.

    --
    "Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
  3. Re:First informative post... mod parent up. by freddy_dreddy · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Don't see why ... submarines are renowned for not being connected to the internet. Advantages of Linux over Windows on the front of network security is lost here. Secondly, Windows source isn't open to the Russians or Chinese - can the Linux community guarantee there aren't a few trojans in Linux that date back a few years?

    Apply Occam's razor and imagine what's easier to infiltrate: an American-based corporation or an open community that's mainly composed of anonymous contributors with handles like "uber1337" ? AFAIK British defence answered that question.

    --
    "Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
  4. Re:How deep? by gbjbaanb · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    if you're doing the narrow fields of engineering or science (as opposed to everyday life), you can choose whatever units you like.

    But remember folks, choosing multiple sets of units for your calculations crash rockets.