Airbus 380 To Have Linux In Every Seat 332
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
the kernel was a 2.4 version as I recall...
FWIW (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:FWIW (Score:1, Interesting)
Or use something like Knoppix, where things aren't written to stable storage at all. (Surely there would be a way to make RedHat behave that way.)
This is not the first Airbus with Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:FWIW (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:StarOffice or Microsoft Office? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, the two articles don't agree on that. But the system is based on the Panasonic eX2 [panasonic.aero] which is Linux by all accounts. And simple math (500+ seats times $299 per office license) tells you a single plane would have an IT cost roughly equivalent to that of a mid-sized company.
I think the smart money's on StarOffice here...
Re:Dedicated turbine (Score:3, Interesting)
Also many airplanes have an auxiliary power plant, as you say placed at the tail, it is usually needed to provide fast moving air to spin the main engines, but can produce electricity as well. It is started by an electrical motor, which is powered from the truck on the ground. Batteries may be used, but only as an emergency measure.
Also some airplanes have a small external generator which can be used in an emergency. If you lose lots of power from engines at 40,000 ft you often have more altitude and more speed than you need (depends on where you plan to land,) and if so you can drop both and at the same time get some electrical power.
But in any case, an airplane is well provided with power, except in emergencies. A 50W here and there do not count, and besides the main cabin's lights and entertainment are the first to go if a power source fails.
Re:In Singapore (Score:5, Interesting)
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:FWIW (Score:3, Interesting)
StarOffice ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Gutenberg (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't forget the RAT (Score:4, Interesting)
"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."
Re:In Singapore (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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:FWIW (Score:2, Interesting)
It works extremely well...
In my old school, all hard drives were writable and despite the admin's trying to limit privaledges, PCs had to constantly be nuked and reinstalled due to the crap people put on there. Here, every time a computer restarts, it wipes its HDD and installs from a zero-card.
The great thing about this is that it doesn't restrict what students can do while they're using the computers (installing applications required for work, etc) but it keeps each system perfectly clean.
~Jarik
What is this for? (Score:2, Interesting)
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).
Re:In Singapore (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:StarOffice or Microsoft Office? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In Singapore (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:What is this for? (Score:3, Interesting)
Cheers,
-j.
Re:Well, no wonder. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:In Singapore (Score:3, Interesting)
Do they know something we don't? (Score:5, Interesting)
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... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Delta/Song already uses Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh. One question that came to mind immediately was: Did those people actually see linux crash, or did they see linux rebooting. These are two very different things, of course, but I've found that even experienced users can be rather sloppy about such insignificant details.
I'm sure that most people who've taken commercial flights have noticed things like the cabin lights all flickering at times, especially during takeoff. No big deal for lights, but this will "crash" pretty much any computer using that power system. And the crew obviously has control of the lights; why would you be surprised if they could also control all the computers? Just as the control panel has buttons to turn all the lights on and off, I'd expect that you could reboot all the seatback computers from the control panel. You could also override what they're doing and show some particular video clip.
I'd think that the ability to tell all these little computers to do something simultaneously would be a good selling point. And considering how the power-supply systems work in commercial airliners, I'd expect that it would be normal to do a net reboot of the little buggers frequently. The ability to easily do such things from a central control system would be a major selling point.
So, rather than us _not_ talking about linux "crashing", I'd think we'd be interested in information about how these seatback computers are configured and how they're managed by the crew.
Not that I expect to see much real information here. And I'd guess that much of the airlines' control software is proprietary, for "security" (by obscurity) reasons.
Re:In Singapore (Score:2, Interesting)
Open Source operating system are used more than you think in avionics. A real time version [rtmx.com] of OpenBSD is used in military aircraft, for example.
Re:Security? (Score:3, Interesting)
After a few minutes I'd managed to kill the kiosk software, bring up the on-screen keyboard and start browsing around their local network shares - which had "saved" customer pictures on.
My point is that for kiosk style systems it should be an absolutely minimal customized install with restricted network access. Obviously on aircraft entertainment systems they'd be completely separate, but you just need one badly judged integration combined with an off the shelf system and you'll end up with another disaster like the Kodak shop.