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

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

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.

Re:Delta/Song already uses Linux

I see. They must have recompiled the kernel.

And here's a picture of the reboot..

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

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

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

Yeah, right... when penguins fly!

Re:The Year of Linux on the Desktop

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

Re:Delta/Song already uses Linux

You must be new here. You do _not_ talk about Linux crashing on Slashdot.

industrial espionage

what a great way to spy on naive commuters

I always believed

Penguins CAN fly!

Re:I always believed

Not if its on the watch list.

Re:I always believed

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

One the size of a keyboard and mouse?

Too bad no internet right now...

Otherwise it might be a good place (or not?) to do some hacking things...

FWIW

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

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

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

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:Dedicated turbine

What provides the power to fuel pumps?

Engine driven AC generators. If the pumps are unpowered, the engines will gravity feed (except #2 on a DC-10... it's uphill), though they will probably not have enough fuel flow to make rated takeoff power. Not a problem in cruise.

How the pilot is to know what RPMs of remaining engines are (kinda important if you have one or more off,)

Essential instruments (and the lights to see them) are on a separate bus powered by the back up battery via an inverter for a minimum of 30 minutes. On some aircraft, indefinitely via a RAT (ram air turbine.)

and whether an engine is already on fire or not?

Fire detection is always on a battery powered bus.

Hydraulics is powered by electric pumps, not by power of will.

Unless your flying a 787 (no one has yet), your hydraulics on a Boeing or Airbus are powered by engine driven hydraulic pumps. There are usually some electric auxilary pumps for various events/circumstances, but not primary flight control.

Most of the battery's power will be spent on mechanically controlling the airplane.

100% wrong. Controls are hydraulic. (Electric/hydraulic on the 380, but no battery in flight could power that.)

Entertainment systems and galleys are the first things offloaded in the event of a generator failure. The biggest risk thes entertainment system pose is fire - ask SwissAir [wikipedia.org]

Don't forget the RAT

Don't forget the RAT, or Ram Air Turbine [wikipedia.org]. 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."

This is not the first Airbus with Linux

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?

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.

Well, no wonder.

Airlines are not going to put an OS synonymous with "crash" in front of passengers. Everything, right down to the lighting has to work well to keep the appearance of order. Anything else makes the passengers nervous and looking for another airline.

Re:Well, no wonder.

The 1990s called and would like their Win95/98/ME FUD back. Most people have an extremely short-term memory (see: elections) and in recent years with XP it's been mostly stable. It will go months between every time I have an involuntary shutdown (but sometimes it seems to build up cruft so a reboot is necessary - a scheduled one is still a lot different from a BSOD). Unless you're talking to someone that got a machine infected by viruses and shit, people actually won't curse like they once did. It works well enough that Windows crashes are actually on the noise level of power outages and application crashes, yes they're annoying but you're not buying an UPS for it, nor are you switching to Linux. And please don't compare Linux server uptimes with Windows desktop uptimes, Windows uptimes improve a lot on server class hardware too. In short, they're both stable enough for desktop use, so figure out what Linux does better instead of using antiquated and mostly irrelevant rethoric.

Re:Well, no wonder.

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.

StarOffice or Microsoft Office?

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

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

I for one...

... welcome our new linux-carrying plane overlords! Wait? Wrong Meme? ...oh

Nothing To See...

I'm a frequent traveler and have already seen the KrisWorld systems that were in place on the Boeing 777-300ERs that Singapore Airlines have. It's really just an entertainment system that runs on top of Linux and nothing much more. It doesn't offer more than what other in-flight entertainment systems offer. To add on, I saw this back in 2006, so the system isn't new. I wouldn't be surprised if they used the system on their new A380s, as it does the job.

Though, I have to say that my main impression of the system was ingrained into me when it crashed in the middle and rebooted with a little penguin logo at the top-left. This actually happened two times in flight. It makes me wonder how badly these things might damage the reputation of Linux in general.

Please

Tell me these are networked with the computer helping fly the plane. ;)

Who cares about subjects?

You better hope these penguins and the flight computer are on different networks.

ODF

This could help with the uptake of ODF (and possibly odf compatibility in MS products), if enough people do their work in transit on these machines.

Didn't these guys learn anything from "The Net"???

    Surely, someone will r00t the terminal, take over the plane's guidance systems, and from there, the entire air traffic network!!!

Keyboards? Mice?

Lord, I don't know which would be the worse nightmare - being behind the guys taking full size keyboards and though a TSA checkpoint on a bad day, or sitting beside them when they try to use the full size with number pad keyboard on typical tray table.

StarOffice ?

Despite what is said above, the Singapore Airlines website doesn't mention StarOffice, but MSOffice [singaporeair.com]. Using Wine maybe ?

A bootup shot.

see here [flickr.com] (not sure if this is fake).

Gutenberg

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.

Only one USB slot?

I hope there's actually at least 2, or some other way of making it possible to use a keyboard, mouse and USB flash drive at the same time.

Oh Miss...

... can I get a keyboard without so many boogers on it?

But seriously. If they now start putting some sort of PC in every hotel room there would be far fewer reasons to even be carrying around a laptop. A pocket sized device like the N800 would be good enough for quick web access.

"Ugh! Honey, call the flight attendent . . ."

" . . . this seat-back pocket is full of core files."

It *is* StarOffice...

... but is terribly slow. I tried it on a SIA 777-300ER from Zurich to Singapore.

You haven't fully experienced mobility until...

...you've surfed pr0n at 20.000ft

Northwest/KLM too

On my flights from Minneapolis to Amsterdam and from Amsterdam to Memphis the in-seat entertainment on the A330-300 screens ran RedHat. They booted it and like others on here have already mentioned, it showed the familiar penguin on the boot loader. And something that got a bit of a laugh out of me was that Garden State was showing on them and they cut out the beginning scene of the movie where the plane is going down. Anything to keep passengers from thinking of a crash.

Yes,

Yes but will it run .......oh wait,

What is this for?

I would still much prefer to bring my laptop (all risks recognised). I can see how non-business passengers could use these, but I see no reason why business passengers would use these over their laptops. Laptops can plug in, and they have EVERYTHING a business passenger needs, rather than just some. And since it is StarOffice, not MS Office, business passengers will hate it. Plus, businesses would be worried about the data security anyway.

I have not flew as a business passenger just yet in my lifetime, and I would still bring my laptop even if they had these on the plane. I definitely plan on not using these until they make further improvements, like including the keyboard and mouse, adding OpenOffice and Firefox, and a good set of games. If I were running this, I would have the computers reset from network image before every take-off.

Lastly, why do they not have keyboard and mouse included? They could easily have very ergonomic touchpads/mouseballs and keyboards. I know this is not too costly for them. Nobody should have to bring a keyboard and mouse for the plane, especially when there is only one USB port (oh yeah add a hub is the solution? pathetic).

Will this ever roll out.

Is this going to cause another delay?

Won't crash

This plane won't crash :P

Microsoft Office software?

Business Class: "You can also access built-in Microsoft Office software that allows you to create documents....." How are they using Microsoft Office in REDHAT? Is this some Mistake? Or, are they using Windows Vista for Business class?

Meanwhile in the cockpit...

The captain, co-pilot and navigator have been outfitted with Windows Vista Supreme!

The article is not about Airbus

"Airbus S.A.S. A380 and The Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner, when these aircraft enter service"

How to crash at 27,000 feet

If I Wine do I get a Windows seat?

Do they know something we don't?

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...

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

New Airline Slogan

When You Can't Travel With Your Mom's Basement, Choose Singapore Airlines.

Touchscreen in economy?

Please tell me those economy seats don't use touch-screens. Imagine the fun of someone poking the back of your seat's headreset for 12 hours while they work on their PowerPoint presentation.

Air Canada + Microsoft = ?

I observed a similar in-flight entertainment system on-board an Air Canada flight recently. It was running some variant of Windows. Quite "entertaining". The interface was not responsive at all, taking, I would guess, more that 10 seconds to respond to the touch screen presses. Then, after the lengthy selection process, many items were not available. The system seemed basically unusable. Kind of funny to me, because two of my most hated corporations working together made the most piss-poor excuse for a system I have seen in a long time. The system actually reminded me of that flash animation spoof, "Windows RG". FYI, I was flying on a ticket purchased for me by someone else.. I would never recommend or choose to pay for an Air Canada ticket.

I can see the dmesg now

"Bluetooth: new device found (Airbus A380)"

Linux will not save them from SEE

There are a number of anecdotal comments already about Windows/Linux media centers on planes, and how "robust" they are. Many of these failures are hardware failures - specifically, "Single-Event Upsets" (SEU) [solarstorms.org], which are bit-flips in hardware memory that occur regardless of software choice. As feature sizes on modern RAM and CPUs shrink, their susceptibility to neutron radiation increases, to the point (which was about a decade ago) that operators at aircraft altitudes should expect some type of memory failure (CPU register, program/data cache, RAM, etc.) every 2-3 hours on equipment which has not been rad-hardened (expensive/heavy) or designed to withstand these effects (expensive). EDAC can help to prevent some of these errors, but not all of them, since software alone can not guarantee detection of SEUs. In-flight entertainment centers are probably not the first place the airline decides to spend all of their money - these systems are probably as SEU-tolerant as any run-of-the-mill desktop.

openoffice or microsoft office

the picture link seems to indicate ms office.
http://www.singaporeair.com/saa/en_UK/content/exp/ entertainment/screens.jsp [singaporeair.com]
so which is it ?

Re:A380?

the article that you linked to talks about the cargo version.

Not according to the article you link to

Not according to the article you link to. That's talking about freighter version.

Re:A380?

That's for the cargo version of the plane. Note that your article states that Airbus had diverted resources to work on the passenger version of the plane, which is the subject of the current article.

Re:Wow, so many licenses!

You're obviously joking, but just for the sake of saying it: the GPL covers distribution, not use, so those passengers don't need to agree to anything at all, let alone a license.

But hey, here's a question: Let's say the airline makes a bunch of modifications to the GPL software they're using. I understand that they do not need to release those modifications unless they distribute the software. Does making Linux-machines available to their customers count as distribution?

Re:In Singapore

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

"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

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

they felt the need to virtualize that Linux-based OS under an RTOS.

More specifically, RTCore provides the Hard Real Time interrupt and thread handling as RTlinux alone is only Soft Real Time capable. But make no mistake, RTlinux is not used as an in flight entertainment system in the EFIS/One.

The following paper has a good description of what RTCore is and does for RTlinux.

http://vir.liu.se/~TDDB72/rtproj/reports2006/04-v2 -oskhe171steho564-RTLinux_VxWorks_scheduling.pdf [vir.liu.se]

Re:In Singapore

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

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:Wow, so many licenses!

When they have their own people on it, which they probably have (for security alone), there is no stock upping.

And Linus does not receive anything directly for any sold linux distribution. (though he probably still has stock handed over by some of them)

Re:A380 = Vaporware

Didn't you even read the parent post ?

Singapore Airlines will be rolling out the A380 superjumbo on October 26th

Here's a link as well... http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070816/sc_space/a3 80tobeginflyingcommerciallyonoct25 [yahoo.com]

And if you want to see one in person... http://www.aviation.com/business/070814_a380usdemo tour.html [aviation.com]

Re:In Singapore

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

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.

Re:Watch LCD TV as you fly to Hades!

Airbags are only useful in a very narrow range of impact speeds. If the impact speed is low enough, you don't need them, but over 70MPH they don't tend to make much of a difference. Coincidentally, this is the range in which most car crashes happen. But for airline crashes, it's an entirely different story. Furthermore, the airbag mechanism is rather bulky, which means less room for passengers.

Re:Will they let me install Emacs?

Why would they let you install a new operating system on their computer?