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USS Zumwalt — a Guided Missile Destroyer Running On Linux
New submitter SanDogWeps writes "Sean Gallagher over at Ars Technica reports that when the U.S.S. Zumwalt (DDG 1000) puts to sea later this year, it will be different from any other ship in the Navy's fleet in many ways. The $3.5 billion ship is designed for stealth, survivability, and firepower, and it's packed with advanced technology. And at the heart of its operations is a virtual data center powered by off-the-shelf server hardware, various flavors of Linux, and over 6 million lines of software code. From the article: 'Called the Common Display System, or CDS (pronounced as "keds" by those who work with it), the three-screen workstations in the operations center are powered by a collection of quad-processor Intel motherboards in an armored case, which gives new meaning to the nautical phrase "toe buster." Even the commanding officer's and executive officer's chairs on the bridge have CDS workstations built-in. Each CDS system runs multiple LynxOS-based Linux virtual machines, which can run on various networks partitioned by security level and purpose. '"
People don't kill people. Linux kills people.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The captain's name is James Kirk.
Hey, when you signed on to open source you agreed you had no control over what it ended up being used for. Stallman's rage could probably power a small city though.
Animals fight. Humans fight. It's stupd and sad and I hope we can move long term away from it. In the meantime, I for one am happy we have a strong defense. Do you honestly think Russia and China aren't interested in global hegemony?
That said, I'm not so happy about our offensive game.
Anyway freedom is a double edged sword. Nobody gets to pick and choose who uses FOSS for what purpose. That's sort of the point. You honestly don't think Linux has played a military roll before?
On the other hand they may contribute back to the community, and probably already have done so.
And it's a hell of a lot better than them running Windows. You'd be amazed how many mission critical Windows boxes are on a typical ship, to say nothing of a military vessel.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that anti-ship missile technology has been ahead of defence systems now for quite some time, such that basically any ship that gets within range of them is basically always sunk. What's more, Russia, Iran and China all have such missiles. What exactly are these ships being built for, beyond the jobs they produce?
LynxOS is a proprietary Unix, compatible with Linux binaries.
It does not contain the Linux kernel and is closed source.
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Isn't there a provision in the license stating the software cannot be used for weapons purposes or something of the like?
No, and if there were then it would not be considered Open Source (clause 6 of the OSD, 'No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor').
Technically, it's not open source software. It's a proprietary Unix-compatible OS (yeah, that's still a thing).
The headline is wrong since it has essentially nothing to do with Linux.
Linux doesn't kill people, Windows NT kills people!
(Or at least it kills ships... got to watch out for those divide by zero errors!)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The design of the Zumwalt solves that problem by using off-the-shelf hardware—mostly IBM blade servers running Red Hat Linux—and putting it in a ruggedized server room.
Many servers are running Linux not Lynx.
"DD" = destroyer
"G:" = guided missile
"1000" = Generally warships are numbered sequential but they moved to an easily identifiable number to designate a new generation of ships.
Hey, when you signed on to open source you agreed you had no control over what it ended up being used for.
Indeed, and for good reason. There are almost limitless ways in which a software author might want to discriminate against fields of use, and no prospect of achieving global consensus on what should or should not be allowed. One of the key benefits of Open Source is that you don't have to read the licence of every single package you install to find out whether it is safe to use. The most practicable way to achieve this is to prohibit restrictions on what you can use the software for.
Fire has been used by humans for 1.9 million years or so. It is very useful for killing people painfully. I'm still pretty happy with fire.
Linux has been used from the early nineties, and now its going to kill people. I'm still pretty happy with Linux.
Granted, I'm not going to brag about that aspect, but I wouldn't go so far to say it is a ghastly aspect. Modern militaries use everything from brooms to paperclips in support of their mission to kill stuff. That's because militaries use systems to accomplish their tasks, just like everything else does. If you create a system to move food around the globe, you also create a system that moves food between war zones.
I'd be proud that Linux is deemed capable of underlying a mission critical system, even if I don't like the results of said system.
You had me until the last sentence.
War isn't profitable? Sure, it isn't profitable for you and me. But it's highly profitable for the military industrial complex and for the state.
Das reboot!
Linux runs on old hardware.
Linux runs on embedded hardware.
Linux runs on XBOX.
Linux runs on a toaster.
Some geek out there is smugly telling his friends "I made Linux run on a US Navy Destroyer".