Chrysler Adopts Linux For Vehicle Simulations

eMilkshake writes "According to this ComputerWorld article, Chrysler is adopting Linux for vehicle crash testing. According to the article, 'the new system is expected to improve simulation performance by 20%, while saving about 40% in costs....'" Insert knee-jerk reaction joke about computers and crashing here.

Linux

[molywi]

Hiring a couple *nix hackers/gurus is a lot more cost effective then spending millions on Windows licenses. The only obvious block in moving to Linux is if the particular software package was not available. I hope this makes cars cheaper as we wont have to support the high Windows license costs everytime we buy a car!

they're replacing Unix

[stevenj]

On the off chance that you actually read the article, you'll see that they're replacing Unix machines, not Windows, with Linux. This is a no-brainer, especially since their software is probably custom-developed and can easily be recompiled under GNU/Linux.

Interesting choice...

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

...especially for a public announcement. I remember a while ago Microsoft was touting their big thing with how their clustering was going to out-do anything opensource with a few months, yet more and more large corporations, and not simply startups or new, tech-savvy ones, are adopting Linux or some other form of open source instead. I hope this demonstrates a continuing shift away from poorly written server code to something more viable and of better spec.

Re:Linux

[kbielefe]

Good point except for those particular applications were running on Unix before, not Windows.

Re:Good one...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the problem with you Linux folk... the customer wants you to speak English!

Customer: "What's an ignition?"

HelpLine: "It's what makes your car start running."

Customer: "Oh! Okay."

Re: I don't get it

[Black Parrot]

> And how precisely are they going to save money ? And save money relative to what ? The old system ? (I kind of doubt it) The same hardware system with a proprietay OS ? Maintenance costs ?

See the links modded up to (5, informative) elsewhere. The general idea is that these days you buy a Linux CoW or Beowulf cluster instead of upgrading the ageing Cray. And for some reason it's still newsworthy, though people have been doing it for the better part of a decade now [beowulf.org].

Not that I mind the good PR for Linux, but it is a curious phenomenon that this kind of detail of a big corporation's IT affairs is considered newsworthy.

Don't tell the joke about the cars and OSes

[Grd. Adm. Thrawn]

It won't be funny, but watch, someone will do it anyway

Re: I don't get it

[Dirtside]

Not that I mind the good PR for Linux, but it is a curious phenomenon that this kind of detail of a big corporation's IT affairs is considered newsworthy.

Keep in mind that the majority of the news sources (or "news sources" where appropriate) covering this story are, if not actual pro-Linux sources (like /.), at the very least computer news sources. Google News comes up with only about 10 hits for chrysler linux (compared to 726 for sniper arrests), so it's not like it's even been that widely covered so far; and this kind of business change actually is a newsworthy development in the computer industry.

You'd see this as a news story from computer-themed news sources; it'd be a "feature" in mainstream or general news sources.

Re:Linux

[Valar]

Actually, what accounts for about 50% of the cost of any given new car in America are the taxes. I was stunned to find this out.

Re:If people bought cars like computers...

[bugnuts]

That's right, you can't sue them. And you don't want to. The car industry is horribly regulated, pretty much since the Ford Pinto. Typical markups on computers these days are about 10%, compared to a standard 100% markup for other products. Some products such as cables, enjoy a 12x increase.

If you had to pay for insurance for a powersupply failing, you'd be spending $5000 for a $2000 computer, although it'd certainly be more reliable. Of course, it wouldn't run as fast, plus you'd then have to invest $1000 into an OS... even Linux most certainly wouldn't be free (as in beer) if liability was an issue.

Re:Linux

[oh]

Just following up on this and other replies. It has been said several times that the parent of the parent [slashdot.org] is incorrect, and several people have asked why it was modded up.

I don't know why it was modded up, but I have moderator points, and I'm not going to mod it as overrated. I'm posting instead.

Moderation shouldn't be about correct or incorrect. It should be about improving the discussion. Its better to leave the post alone and reply to it, that way both view points can be expressed.

Leave the readers to make up their own minds, rather then censoring any views that you disagree with.

Re:they're replacing Unix

[mcrbids]

Somehow, there's this perception that if a business migrates from Unix to Linux, that it's not a victory, that it might as well not be reported.

But, keep in mind, that very many of these Unix to Linux conversions may well have been, 5-7 years ago, Unix to NT conversions. Maybe more than half.

What's happened in the past few years is that Linux has all but halted NT/2000/XP's growth in the server space. And, being a *nix advocate, I think that's good news.

Re:Wait a minute

[joib]

Well, if it was well-known that TCO for a windows cluster would be lower than for a linux cluster on the same hardware, then they would certainly have bought a windows cluster instead. I don't think portability is a big problem here. Most numerical code is quite portable.

Looking at windowsclusters.org, it seems that most project there are using windows simply because MS agreed to supply both hardware and software, en exchange for using windows instead of linux.