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."

Delta/Song already uses Linux

[by 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...

Re:Delta/Song already uses Linux

[by Anonymous Coward]

I've flown Delta on a 757 and seen Linux reboot, too (I think we lost power while waiting for an open runway slot to take off from). But the system in the summary sounds much different; the Delta system didn't have StarOffice, it just had TV, movies, moving maps, etc. Basically read-only, except for paying for the in-flight movies.

And here's a picture of the reboot..

[by Anonymous Coward]

Enjoy a few [flickr.com] pics [flickr.com] here [livejournal.com]. Incidentally "Song airlines" were the first ones Delta put these on. Song went out of business (there's a Frontline episode [pbs.org] you can watch about it) and the Song planes were turned back into Delta planes. Now all the Delta planes are scheduled to have the inflight video stuff too.

Re:Delta/Song already uses Linux

[choas (102419)]

I just returned to the Netherlands this morning, flew from Las Vegas.

Delta indeed uses red-hat linux on their 'seat in front of you consoles'

Also loading some modules which taint the kernel (according to the message I saw)
I think it had to do with AAC.

Nothing against Linux on planes, BUT please, have someone on-board to service the
system or let it be serviced from the ground. As our flight from Las Vegas to New York
only showed red hat reboots continually during the flight, all the time. seemed like
Linux did boot with some ramdisk checksum errors, but it booted, but when the X layer
came on this triggered another reboot.

I'm a unix guy all the way, and they told me I could not have access to the plane's
media 'mainframe' or I would have had a look to see what was wrong. All I saw was that
the whole right side economy side of the plane was left with a rebooting red-hat distribution
showing a cute penguin in its left corner...

The whole time... 5 hours long...

This was NOT a good commercial. I wish it had been.

The whole system worked perfectly when I was flying to San Francisco two weeks ago!

Re:Delta/Song already uses Linux

[jez9999 (618189)]

I'm a unix guy all the way, and they told me I could not have access to the plane's
media 'mainframe' or I would have had a look to see what was wrong.

Wow, they sound like idiots. What airline wouldn't want a random passenger given root access to their systems?

The Year of Linux on the Desktop

[jon_anderson_ca (705052)]

Yeah, right... when penguins fly!

Re:The Year of Linux on the Desktop

[by Anonymous Coward]

I have had it with these motherfucking penguins on this motherfucking plane!

I always believed

[JRGhaddar (448765)]

Penguins CAN fly!

Re:I always believed

[JustOK (667959)]

Not if its on the watch list.

Re:I always believed

[Ultra64 (318705)]

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

One the size of a keyboard and mouse?

This is not the first Airbus with Linux

[S.Gleissner (536865)]

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.

Security?

[eli pabst (948845)]

Hope they secure these well. With all the business travelers it would be a great place to drop a rootkit. From the article it sounds like each seat actually has a thin client, which would in effect reinstall the OS after each user/flight which is good from a security standpoint. But with access to a keyboard and USB hub, it still sounds a bit more vulnerable to abuse than a standard kiosk.

StarOffice or Microsoft Office?

[Grond (15515)]

TFA [singaporeair.com] says that the systems run Microsoft Office, not StarOffice. Unfortunately, their video doesn't show any office software, so it's hard to tell. Maybe someone will hack up a version of portable OpenOffice capable of running on the systems.

finally

[by Anonymous Coward]

nerds can join their own version of the mile high club!

Gutenberg

[WindBourne (631190)]

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.

You haven't fully experienced mobility until...

[zaunuz (624853)]

...you've surfed pr0n at 20.000ft

How to crash at 27,000 feet

[WereRaven (461445)]

If I Wine do I get a Windows seat?

Re:FWIW

[tftp (111690)]

Of course it's possible, and that's how Linux-based embedded systems work. Your /home/$USERNAME can be created in RAM and deleted (recreated from a skeleton) after you log out (or the system restarted.) There is nothing else writeable on the whole box. This is necessary in embedded systems to prevent Flash wearing out, and to ensure reliability. Same needs here.

Dedicated turbine

[Harmonious Botch (921977)]

Not by the engines. Often it is a small dedicated turbine in the tailcone. That way you can have relatively quiet power while you are on the tarmac, and nobody gets sucked into the engines, and the relibility is higher because they are run at lower stresses ( ie: never at 100%, like the main engnes do at takeoff)

Re:Dedicated turbine

[by Anonymous Coward]

You don't know what the hell you're talking about. Strobes don't consume kilowatts. Batteries must supply all flight instrumentation for at least 30 minutes for certification. Deicing is almost all bleed air powered. Engines need no system power to run, even with FADEC. The airplane will not fall like a rock with a total electrical failure. APU's will start just fine without any truck, at all. Gear is hydraulic, not electric. There are a few electrics controlling it, but they have mechanical overrides that allow the flight crew to drop the gear and flaps without electrics.

Re:In Singapore

[tgatliff (311583)]

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.

Re:In Singapore

[rbanffy (584143)]

"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:In Singapore

[burnin1965 (535071)]

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. [technologynewsdaily.com]
"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

[jaweekes (938376)]

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

[SL Baur (19540)]

Singapore Airlines is one of the best airlines in the world (I'd rank only ANA ahead of them). The last time I rode them across the Pacific I was amazed at the service their stewardesses gave. I was seated second row from a bulkhead and behind infant row and was amazed at all the attention the parents got to help their crying babies. They gave them more personal attention in an hour than an entire US carrier plane gets an entire flight.

They already offered a computer equivalent entertainment system (in coach!), but this sounds even better.

I hate most carriers and I hate flying with all the security and no-smoking crap, but in a bad environment, Singapore Airlines and their sister Silk Air do quite a nice job and Changi Airport is *sweet* as International airports go.

The Singapore government may have issues with some, but all my experiences with Singapore have been positive. Reading this makes my day.