Re: [Flightgear-devel] Linux in real-world aviation (was: FG and VATSIM)

2007-09-17 Thread Robin
Curtis Olson wrote:
 3. I'll just toss in this unrelated item ... a week ago I got to fly 
 on a NWA A330.  This aircraft had individual movie/music/game/map 
 displays for each seat.  I managed to hang/lock mine up ... apparently 
 because the map wasn't working on this flight for some reason.  So I 
 asked the flight attendent to reset the display and when she did, it 
 booted Linux of all things!  I thought that was interesting.

 Regards,

 Curt.
 -- 
 Curtis Olson - University of Minnesota - FlightGear Project
 http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/ 
 http://baron.flightgear.org/%7Ecurt/   
 http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/  http://www.flightgear.org
 Unique text: 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Linux isn't FAA certified so it's not used for mission-critical systems 
but in-flight entertainment systems would be very useful on Linux. You 
managed to figure out what distro the Airbus was running? Some custom one?

I do know that there is enough FAA certified hardware on the market 
capable of running RT-Linux, and I expect to see some of that hardware 
bleeding onto the instrument market. The A380 already does PC-based 
systems in its flight deck, although probably not in its entirety. 
Programming instrumentation in OpenGL is the way to go, and the avionics 
manufacturers picked that up, look at the ARINC661 standard for example.

-
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse012070mrt/direct/01/
___
Flightgear-devel mailing list
Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel


Re: [Flightgear-devel] Linux in real-world aviation (was: FG and VATSIM)

2007-09-17 Thread Curtis Olson
On 9/17/07, Robin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Linux isn't FAA certified so it's not used for mission-critical systems
 but in-flight entertainment systems would be very useful on Linux.


Yup and if they are running it on a couple hundred seats, individually,
there would be no need to pay the license fees to MS which would add up
really fast ... especially since they like to charge per potential user.
:-)

You
 managed to figure out what distro the Airbus was running? Some custom one?


My best guess is a debian derivative, probably stripped down for this
specific application.  I saw the debian penguin come up at the head of the
console boot messages ... only one penguin so it looks like a single
processor.  I don't know what the actual hardware really is ... I'd be
surprised if they had one CPU per seat ... maybe they were doing some sort
of virtualization?  Interesting to see.  Apparently my seat neighbors were
not nearly as excited as I was to find out the entertainment system was
running linux ... :-)

Regards,

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson - University of Minnesota - FlightGear Project
http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/  http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/
http://www.flightgear.org
Unique text: 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
-
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse012070mrt/direct/01/___
Flightgear-devel mailing list
Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel


Re: [Flightgear-devel] Linux in real-world aviation

2007-09-17 Thread Robin
Ralf Gerlich wrote:
 I don't know whether this should be termed a good thing. Or why should
 Linux-advocates be proud of their operating system being seen rebooting
 on two independent instances? ;-)

 Cheers,
 Ralf
   
They would be more concerned about what was happening BEFORE the reboot. 
The fact that the system reboots only proves the fool-proofness of it, 
as the IFE system comes happily back up again and continues what it was 
doing before :)

-
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse012070mrt/direct/01/
___
Flightgear-devel mailing list
Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel


Re: [Flightgear-devel] Linux in real-world aviation

2007-09-17 Thread Curtis Olson
On 9/17/07, Robin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Ralf Gerlich wrote:
  I don't know whether this should be termed a good thing. Or why should
  Linux-advocates be proud of their operating system being seen rebooting
  on two independent instances? ;-)

 They would be more concerned about what was happening BEFORE the reboot.
 The fact that the system reboots only proves the fool-proofness of it,
 as the IFE system comes happily back up again and continues what it was
 doing before :)


In my case the map application hung, presumably waiting for non-existant
flight data since there was a message at one point that mapping services
were not going to be available on this flight (which I ignored and tried
anyway.)

So a reboot is something a flight attendent knows how to do and can do
quickly, versus logging in remotely, killing some application, restarting
some other application, etc. etc. :-)

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson - University of Minnesota - FlightGear Project
http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/  http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/
http://www.flightgear.org
Unique text: 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
-
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse012070mrt/direct/01/___
Flightgear-devel mailing list
Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel


Re: [Flightgear-devel] Linux in real-world aviation (was: FG and VATSIM)

2007-09-17 Thread Durk Talsma
On Monday 17 September 2007 18:41, Curtis Olson wrote:
 My best guess is a debian derivative, probably stripped down for this
 specific application.  I saw the debian penguin come up at the head of the
 console boot messages ... only one penguin so it looks like a single
 processor.  I don't know what the actual hardware really is ... I'd be
 surprised if they had one CPU per seat ... maybe they were doing some sort
 of virtualization?  Interesting to see.  Apparently my seat neighbors were
 not nearly as excited as I was to find out the entertainment system was
 running linux ... :-)

Funny, I had actually the same experience, on the same aircraft type / 
airliner on my last flight back from the US (Detroit - Amsterdam, May 17, 
Northwest, A330). The entertainment system crashed midway during a movie, and 
spontaneously rebooted, showing the penguin. 

Cheers,
Durk

-
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse012070mrt/direct/01/
___
Flightgear-devel mailing list
Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel