09th Aug 2005
My Plane Runs Linux
I’m in the air on Song Airways. SFO behind me, JFK is 5 hours in front.
Song has touch screen “information displays” that do Dish Network TV, Movies, Music, Games, and some other stuff. 10 minutes into the programming … “we have to reset the TV”. Ok, so one figures it’ll be a blank screen for a few seconds. Even though I had just been to OSCON for a week, I figured the plane had some wierd proprietary system – you know – something with the imprint of Microsoft all over it.
Imagine my surprise to see a full Red Hat Linux bootup sequence! 10’s of lines of device driver inits, mount points, sheesh.. everything! I nearly burst out laughing, in a strange Jambalaya of “yay, Open Source”, and “ohmigawd, that is soooo ugly to be showing to the end users”.
Pretty cool system, once it’s running. Navigation is via intuitive touchscreen menus. Ok, Jet Blue, time for you to copy!
postscript: on the other hand, Song was on hour late taking off, and we sat on the tarmac for a good 20 minutes waiting for a gate to open up at JFK. I’ve never had that happen with JetBlue.
