NASA Gives Linux a Chance on Portables 88
ces writes "From Government Computer News Feb. 7: 'NASA will give Linux a nod for upcoming portables buy.' It seems Linux is on the list of 'desired' OS's for an upcoming NASA procurement of up to 4,000 laptops, some of which will be destined for use on the Space Shuttle and International Space Station."
Re:Linux in Spaaace... (Score:1)
It's nice that Linux supports so many platforms, just like NT was supposed to do.
...and I'm sure being able to easily modify the OS is essential to some of the work they were doing.
But I bet if they could just throw money at the problem instead, they wouldn't have necessarily looked at Linux. I bet you could customize a version of NT or BSDI or something into oblivion if you had the money.
But this is all just speculation on my part, of course.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Linux in Spaaace... (Score:1)
I just wish it wasn't just because their budget was cut so harshly... Poor NASA. However, now we can say that Linux is truely "Space-Age Technology"...
(Isn't that term getting old? Or am I just starting to believe that "Information Age" bulls**t?
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BFD (Score:1)
It's sickening. Stop. This is not that big a deal. All they said is that they want the laptops to be able to run Linux, not necessarily that they are going to run it. Before getting all excited, RTFA®(read the fucking article):
"NASA specified a flash BIOS for updates and a plug-and-play operating system such as Microsoft Windows 9x, Windows NT or Windows 2000; SunSoft Solaris 2.7 or later versions; or Linux and other Unix variants."
Oh, and... (Score:1)
Heh heh. This is going to be a "portable", right? You think those NASA-scientist weaklings will be carrying around a 25 pound laptop? And what is the cost-per-pound of getting something into space, like $10,000? So that means a 25 pound laptop would cost close to $200,000 more to get into space than a normal one.
You wondered where all that money goes...
Linux Ethernet is from NASA (Linux in Spaaace...) (Score:1)
NASA saw as far back as linux-0.9x that this thing may become useful to them and if it dose it will leave more room in the budget for a few extra spanners.
Re:Every seen Bill Gates' charity (Score:1)
What is this? Are you part of some MS "grassroots" campaign? I thought they learned thier lesson about this. Sure the charity is great but it's REALLY just so BillG can reduce his TAX.
StickBoy
IRIX unscalable?! (Score:1)
IRIX: insecure? possibly; hard to support? sure. unscalable? Absolutely NOT.
Now, I'm not saying that IRIX is THE tits and beer of Unix but scalability is something that IRIX is extremely proficient at.
StickBoy
Re:Every seen Bill Gates' charity (Score:1)
That really does not even begin to compare to all the harm he and the likes of him have done.
Just because he has donated some dollars to charity, does NOT make him exempt from all the harm caused. This just makes me sick. People are no better off because of charity. There have been billions of dollars worth of charity donated to various causes. Do you see that the world has been made any better? Poor countries are still getting poorer and the rich richer. Colonialism is still in effect all over the world and the 'developed' countries are the ones reaping the benefits. Colonialism is just being used by Big Corporations and not countries. And why? Because it fits their charter (Make Tons of Money for Shareholders).
Predatory business practices are now more commonplace than before Bill Gates published any of his books. Yes, people actually follow those who make a buck and not those whose moral is on a higher level.
Linux Penguin has been used and continues to be used to gather money for endangered animals and other charities.
Get your facts straight before you post this garbage.
</rant>
Whew, I just had to get that out of my system.
Re:NASA... (Score:1)
Laptops currently used on the shuttle have to reboot everynow and then when they get funky, but you'll could always blame that on other things besides the radiation.
Re:Linux and Transmeta == space ;-) (Score:1)
The traces on "modern" chips can't take the raditation. Errors all over the place...
Taxpayers... (Score:1)
No OS to buy, no apps to buy = more money for NASA to do research. Woohoo!
Re:NASA... (Score:1)
Of course, being a government agency, NASA could probably blow $20,000/laptop and just shrug their collective shoulders. The question would be would IBM be willing to develop a new product line for only a guarenteed $80,000,000 in sales? Let alone if they charged "market value" for laptops meaning $2,000/piece. $8,000,000 doesn't take you very in that scenario.
Re:This pisses me off (Score:1)
Please, when making arguments FOR linux or a member of the Unix family, refrain from mentioning how any part of said systems is unreliable... Makes you stick out like a sore thumb around here!
Re:Linux and Transmeta == space ;-) (Score:1)
Just because the kernel itself may not crash as often does not mean that questions and other issues won't arise. Support means much more than "i had to reboot my computer"... if it were that simple, 1/2 of the tech support world could probably find new jobs.
Linux is free to acquire, but in a setting such as NASA's, it still costs money to maintain.
Re:Oh, and... (Score:1)
This is an accomplishment??? (Score:1)
Emmett, you've gotta be really hard up to trumpet this. Basically, about the only modern OSes* that aren't provided for by the requirements are MacOS and OS/2. (Unless you consider AmigaOS to be a "modern" OS, and you don't consider BeOS to be a "Unix variant.") Even Minix or Xenix would be considered a "desired OS" under these guidelines.
In case you haven't read them, the OS part reads: "The laptop shall support the operating systems: Windows 95/98/2000, Windows NT, SunSoft Solaris version 2.7 or later, and other Unix or Linux variants."
How selective. Everyone rejoice.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
* When I say modern OSes, I'm talking about ones with a decent amount of users, not some obscure stuff nobody's actually using, no matter how great it is.
Re:Linux and Transmeta == space ;-) (Score:1)
The traces on "modern" chips can't take the raditation. Errors all over the place...
Then, of course, they should be shielded. This is common practise in military electronics to withstand nuclear radiation...
NASA and standards of measurement......... (Score:1)
Will NASA never learn?
They start with requirements in an obsolete system (Inches and Pounds) and then translate it into the proper (and required) SI for the official bid-form, then translate it back for ignorant suppliers......
They can't even do that right!, 24.18m = 9.52 in..
Bunch of amateurs, I'm glad I'm not flying with them or live under the flight path!
Re:This pisses me off (Score:1)
1. gnome-terminal != Linux
2. The sysadmins at your school are lazy. I have been running the latest stable Gnome (october gnome) for the last three months. It has not crashed on me yet.
Re:Linux doesn't scale (Score:1)
There are several TOP-500 linux based supercomputers (includeing some being used in NASA)
Also, someone from NASA has said before "If it does not come with source, this is not software". They want a good stable OS _with_ the source. They don't give a shit about "support". They are smart enough to tweak and fix whatever they need on their own.
NT reliability is a joke. I reboot my linux servers and workstations only to 1) Install new hardware. 2) Upgrade kernel. Try that on NT.
And there are companies behind Linux. SGI, RedHat, Linuxcare, Caldera, VAResearch, etc offer all kinds of support as long as your pocket is deep enough.
NASA already uses a lot of Linux (Score:1)
Internally, we used a lot of Linux boxes, and even more GNU tools on Solaris boxes. In fact, the whole image processing pipeline was built using a series of BASH scripts by the NASA AMES team, as part of their operations deployment.
The web servers for the MPL were Solaris x86 boxes driven by Apache and PHP, while the support boxes for DNS and mail were Linux (red hat, stripped down). All ultra-reliable, getting them secure was the hardest bit of the whole operation really (we considered OpenBSD for a while, but didnt have enough inhouse skills with it)
And, to reassure you, no Windows servers were used for anything other than looking pretty.
Oh, and Quake III. None of the Linux boxes had 3D cards
Anil Madhavapeddy
Now there's a thought. (Score:1)
Re:Linux in Space: Stable as rock or the new Mir? (Score:1)
Well I keep my machines upto date but I very rarely re-boot them. They get rebooted for the following reasons:
1. Kernel upgrade.
2. Hardware Change.
3. Power outage.
At work we have a few machines that are approaching 500 days of uptime so it just goes to show you, set up a machine for a specific task and if it works don't break (ie fool with it)
Linux in Space: Stable as rock or the new Mir? (Score:1)
And yet....
I sometimes feel that all it's reliability and stability is ultimately derived from the way I *can* continually update, recompile, and reconfigure. In other words, my linux box has always been a kind of work in progress for me. And I think it always will be. Despite all the stories of "I got an old Slackware Box in the back room, for three years collecting dust and serving web sites, as free as contact as a leper", I always seem to be tweaking something.
Is this really what we want in our Space Shuttle? I mean, upgrades, bandwidth, and experts aren't exactly as common as space dust (despite the radio show of our intrepid founders, I still think it would be hard to find a geek in space). We want to use systems that are set up to run as is-- statically.
On the other hand, what's the alternative? Unlike most other operating systems, it *is* possible to configure Linux and BSD to support what you want and only what you want. This could lead to incredible stability. Maybe BeOS comes close. So I guess as long as NASA makes sure we're not going to have a "Hey, I got the angband package, but it looks like we forgot the math and science packages" situation, I guess this is good news.
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Lagos - White Rabbit of Linux
Re:I am so unimpressed. (Score:1)
The reason I would choose Linux in this situation over NetBSD, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD is simple: The open software principle has worked very well; however, it requires many developers in order for it to function. By using Linux, NASA ensures that it won't be stuck with legacy code or a lack of appropiate utilities, because chances are someone somewhere is developing it. Even though BSD systems are more efficent in some regards, they simply don't have the community to draw upon that Linux will have in another 2 years. And we'll see who's more efficent then....
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Lagos - White Rabbit of Linux
Linux in Spaaace!!!!! (Score:1)
Holy shit! I'm old.
They're making ... (Score:1)
Re:Except it is really damned expensive. (Score:1)
Re:NASA... (Score:1)
Re:NASA... (Score:1)
I doubt it, Hubble is much less shielded from radiation than either a space station or the shuttle would be. Remember, people will be living in the space station for months at a time - it wouldn't do for a solar flare to wipe them all out...
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2 things (Score:1)
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Adding Linux to portable computers was a challenge in the OS? early days because of missing device drivers and incompatible hardware.
But the picture is changing. Compaq Computer Corp. and Linux publishers such as Red Hat Inc. of Durham, N.C., distribute tips on running Linux on notebook computers.
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Everyone aparantly was sitting around wonderring how to get Linux to run on various hardware and Red Hat until Red Hat "Gave them a few tips" on how it was done. he heh. Speaking of device drivers my ethernet card driver was programmed by Donald Becker who works at Nasa and also does cool things with Beowulf clusters.
from the
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1.2.2 Software
The laptop shall support the operating systems: Windows 95/98/2000, Windows NT, SunSoft Solaris TM version 2.7 or later, and other Unix or Linux variants .
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Sorry, it looks like Apple just isn't cool enough... it's a pity really.
Re:Why GNOME is synonymous with Linux (Score:1)
Re:NASA and standards of measurement......... (Score:1)
Sony Vaio PCG-X9 sounds perfect! (Score:1)
Go NASA! Go Linux!
Awesome (Score:1)
Re:Linux in Spaaace... (Score:1)
Is there a zero-gravity patch for the kernel ? (Score:1)
sounding a loud warning before ejecting your disks...
or being able to display the screen upside down...
Re:NASA... (Score:1)
I'm sure power consumption is on the list of requirements somewhere.
URL please (Score:2)
You said:
"If you check out their anonymous FTP server, and look around hard enough, you can find some really cool GPLd toys."
I hope you can give us some url to save us from the "look around hard enough" stage.
Any url, please?
Re:BFD (Score:2)
A lot of people have the weird idea that NASA is some monolithic agency where the CIO dictates the color of the mouse pads. It doesn't work like that. If you name an operating system, somebody, somewhere is using it. The goal is to use the best tool for the job, not to worship at the throne of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Linus Torvalds.
These contracts are issued to save money on items that are likely to be in high demand. It also reduces the amount of paperwork and red tape.
Re:Linux doesn't scale (Score:2)
I do get your point about having a company standing behind the software though... It's too easy for red hat to pass the buck on some issues... I'd still question your choice of NT over Solaris or SCO, though.
NASA... (Score:2)
Linux at JSC (Score:2)
JSC has been the site of an IT jihad [bobrk.com]. In 1996, the head honcho of IT at JSC made a push to "standardize" the IT environment. His decision was to ignore the advice to use standardized, cross-platform file formats and instead make JSC a Microsoft shop. This put the large userbase of Macs directly in the line of fire and they fought back. It became a long, drawn out political fight between JSC officials, the Inspector General, and Congress. In the end, nobody completely won. But Microsoft technology made some major leaps forward in seizing control of JSC's IT infrastructure.
Like with many other large organizations, JSC today is very much a Microsoft shop. It is a prime test center (read: Microsoft partner) for various MS offerings to include Exchange, SMS, and Win2K. But Microsoft does not hold all of JSC. Macs have made a comeback. Various Unix flavors exist to include Solaris, HPUX, AIX, IRIX... to name a few. VMS has always been in the shadows. And Linux is sprouting up.
Linux shows up as "testbeds" in various organizations. It runs tasks as rogue installations (desktops as well as servers). And one organization has even created their own dual-boot Windows/Linux standard desktop load. Furthermore, the ODIN IT contract has received requests from JSC "customers" for a Linux load.
And now JSC's contracting office has set Linux as one of its requirements for future hardware purchases.
JSC has followed the pattern so many other organizations have followed. Linux has gone from an obscure user-supported rogue installation to an official, sponsored requirement. The fact that this was done in spite of the direction of internal political pressure and the natural tendancy of these kinds of large organizations to resist change is a tribute to Linux.
Where can I get my own Jinx? (Score:2)
OK, so it had Lea Thompson and "Forever Man" by Eric Clapton. But still...
GRID Laptops (Score:2)
I was in contact with an astronaut recently and he told me that some of the programs they run on the shuttle are still MSDOS programs.
Re:not new.. (Score:2)
No, he said it was GPLed. Which means it is not in the public domain.
You have to claim a copyright on something to put it under a license. Public domain is by definition a forfeiture of any rights under copyright law.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
Linux and Transmeta == space ;-) (Score:2)
Combine Linux with the low power requirements of the Crusoe and... woohoo! perfect space application. No support needed and very little power.
Microsoft's new slogan should be "Houston, we have a problem"...
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
Re:Linux in Spaaace... (Score:2)
BSDI, maybe. But you see what happens when you just try to create DRIVERS for NT...
Don't forget, computers in space can (but not necessarily always do) mean the difference between life and death. "open that airlock... damn! bluescreen!
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
Re:Uh (Score:2)
I second that. I've been running Linux for several years and have only seen... maybe two... crashes. And those were all due to hardware failures.
My advice to the original poster: If you think that the window manager and OS are one and the same... go back to windows. Linux will hold no advantage for you...
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
Re:not new.. (Score:2)
I thought that, being a government agency, unless there was some kind of national security motivation, that software generated by them must be put in the public domain.
That's how it is when I worked at the Bonneville Power Administration. I got to take home all the code I worked on, because it was done on goverment dime.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
Re:Linux and Transmeta == space ;-) (Score:2)
I meant radiation hardened, of course.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
Requests for Proposals (Score:2)
Since Linux is one of several acceptible operating systems, they may or may not make the cut. A lot will depend on how well the OS meets the other expectations.
This seems the proper way of going about it -- define the problems to be solved, and see what is out there that can solve those problems.
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