ISS Switches To Linux

Originally posted by PhoenixOD
reply to post by Slugworth

 

There is so much more to the Microsoft systems under the hood than most people will ever understand. That's because they are designed to work well in many different ways.

You may want to think its 'shoddy' for whatever reason that's fine, but spend as many years as i did learning the systems inside and out to become a fully qualified Microsoft Professional and Microsoft Technology Specialist and you will understand how clever the systems really are.

edit on 11-5-2013 by PhoenixOD because: (no reason given)

No disrespect meant, but speaking as someone who also learnt MS servers (and the clients that have to go with them) inside and out, (ex-MCSE'er here) any Nix urinates from a great height over anything that MS has produced, all the way from OS to business productivity suites and softwares. Why? One simple reason, a lack of quality control, or rushing the newest release out the door just because the calender says they have to. Many Nixes are ready when they are ready, or, when we have fixed all known bugs. Debian (my desktop OS of choice) just released Wheezy. No idea how long they were fixing the bugs but MS just doesn't roll that way. Money will never win over pure, free, professionalism.

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
Debian (my desktop OS of choice) just released Wheezy. No idea how long they were fixing the bugs but MS just doesn't roll that way. Money will never win over pure, free, professionalism.

Although I will agree with you that MS do indeed rush things out the door so to speak, you also have to acknowledge that it is not possible to simulate every envirmoent that your OS will come up against. This is the main reason for integration issues.

An example is MS Dynamics. An excellent ERP suit by any standards. Comes with off the shelf templates but none of those templates are usable.. only as a start point for bespoke.

So a company takes on Dynamics bespoke it to their needs.. then MS release an update based upon crash reports etc.. the update integrates into the original template the bespoke was designed from and ultimately breaks the bespoke....

of course MS like it this way because it gives MS gold and plat partners plenty of work... but is this really the best root to take??

I think where software needs to go is based upon organic algorithms which adapt to changes on the fly. I have seen this done before and it's quite impressive. just impracticable at this point.

Korg.

Hi, Linux fans !

[ On a side note, anyone remenbers the good times of Quarterdeck's QEMM ?? ]

I will write here for the first time, what I did ask verbally many times to persons
"defending" Micro$oft :

" I will give you a chance, and I will show you only ONE of my hand, and this is 5 fingers !
NOW, list me **5** original ideas that came out of Win$loz !! "

For comparison, I will list what MS "copied/snatched" :
The mouse,
the icone menus or GUI,
Lotus 123,
WordPerfect. . .For those 2 previous they barely changed the manuals!!
Compress, from Peter Norton = defrag,
Flight Sim,
"Load high" in the file CONFIG.SYS for computer starts or boots.
Win NT, it was the best "OS version" they did, because it was taken from DIGITAL !
Because NT was stable, it is/was used in companies/shops, and used for networking, right ?
The browsers' CACHE, it was invented by Quarterdeck !!
and one of the latest? the Xbox !
. . .etc. . .etc. . .

Now? back to 5 MS "original" ideas?
1 2 3 4 5

Blue skies.

Originally posted by Korg Trinity
I think where software needs to go is based upon organic algorithms which adapt to changes on the fly. I have seen this done before and it's quite impressive. just impracticable at this point.
Korg.

I completely agree. When engineering, software programming, consistency and more importantly, non-timetabled "releases" are paramount to stability, usability and security then you have to examine the competitors. This is exactly Debian's standpoint, among many others, Linux or Unix. People who work mainly for free for a common goal, in their spare time.

ETA Not trying to be the Evangelist here, just calling it how I see it.

reply to post by C-JEAN


They took a lot of stuff from digital as they hired a guy and wanted originally for nt4 to be posix compatible so they could cross market windows

The Death of windows, yay.
it's full of... bulk that has No use.
and it spys on Ever thing you do.

reply to post by Hefficide


Oh wow Heff,

I didn't realize it was you with the new avvie. I guess that says something about changing avvies.

Hey, this is one of the happiest days ever, and in my mind helps to validate my 3 year obsession with Unix. I have been working on Xen hypervisor and qemu/kvm. This thread made my day. Thanks for posting it along with the badass penguin.



Go Linus T.!!!

What really happened was they were playing to much solitare and minesweeper to they had to switch from windows to linux which has crappy games.

Plus windows 8 came out and now nasa cant afford to upgrade so now they have slow computer, and when they look at pornos they always get virus

Originally posted by sonnny1
Ive run Windows and Linux. Linux is superior, MHO

I'd love to love Linux, but until I can do everything just as good on Linux as I can on Windows, Linux will never have a place on my PC's, unfortunately.

For instance, video games. I'm a video game whore. If I can't play my games with full hardware support, then Linux on my machine would be pointless.

reply to post by _BoneZ_


You could run both systems on a PC........

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
One simple reason, a lack of quality control, or rushing the newest release out the door just because the calender says they have to.

That's what I said to my boss when he complained about the problems in the software we had just made. When people say that we are going to send the product to the client in two days and we are still finishing the last code changes, the most likely is that there will be problems.

That's one of the reasons Linux is (and should be) so popular in scientific work, as they can make (or change) the operating system in the same way they sometimes make or change the tools they need for their work.

The scientists on the I.S.S have just stated that a operating system with quality control standards based on voluntary non paid time is superior to the quality that paid professionals of a publicly traded company can produce for scientific research. "and black-ops super secret time warp experiments"

My cousin in law works long hours and makes big bucks. He makes microsoft networking happen. Is his work not enough for the I.S.S or is his work better focused on bringing in revenue from revenue dispensers.

This may be a thing to think about regarding government spending.

reply to post by ManOfHart

This may be a thing to think about regarding government spending.

This is the thing that really interests me. If you read between the lines of the whole linux vs windows debate it seems that everyone here agrees that, for this particular setting, linux is an obvious choice. So why was it used in the first place? It is like McDonalds being chosen as the primary food supplier for the military. That would raise some eyebrows, wouldn't it? It reeks of nepotism.

Originally posted by _BoneZ_

I'd love to love Linux, but until I can do everything just as good on Linux as I can on Windows, Linux will never have a place on my PC's, unfortunately.

For instance, video games. I'm a video game whore. If I can't play my games with full hardware support, then Linux on my machine would be pointless.

Of course you know the reason why?
It would have nothing to do with MS dominating the OS market because they insist vendors have it pre-installed, would have nothing to do with locking people in to using their products?
Anti-trust practices? Nah, couldn't be!

The only reason for lack of games and some of the software people pay for, is because MS dominates the market, hence that's where the money is for developers.

It really sucks when machines (more-so in the past) are made with MS in mind according to their specs when Linux has to reverse engineer or beg for lines of proprietary code for things like drivers for video cards etc.
Crap like silverlight for Netflix, shutting out linux users. (still?)
MS tries to get their grubby little hands on everything to shut out the competition to maintain their dominance, not because they are better, but because they are money grubbing scum and they don't want to play fair.

Getting a lot better though, but MS is always trying to shut down linux, therefore people should not support MS for that reason alone. Stop being apologetic flag waving fan boys for the man, man!

I'm not too surprised they were using windows to start with, for one reason: it seems to be the most common OS amongst scientists in labs and facilities, especially in universities. I've seen plenty of expensive equipment, 4 million dollar sem's, raman specs, mass specs etc. hooked up to a pc running windows xp. It's what the scientists grew up with, what they used at university, and what they used when doing research on their phd's. Why not just let them use what they are familiar with when out in space, and something which is already compatible with their software.

But just because its the most common does not mean its the best, I'm amazed how it got this way, how so many research & analysis or modelling software is only available on windows, and how prolific the OS became amongst the scientific community. One would think Linux would have dominated for all those years, so I do believe it had a lot to do with windows having the money to make the right deals and aggressively market, rather than there being any inherent advantage to it.

Originally posted by jimmyx
ok, before everybody gets all gooey, and gushy about Linux, you might want to look at this link and obviously others:
en.wikipedia.org...

edit on 11-5-2013 by jimmyx because: (no reason given)

Im surprised that someone took the time to write an whiny article on wikipedia about how terrible Linux is, Linux IS the alternative. If its too complicated, you can always use windows... or eh MacOS.

Im using Ubuntu right now with the Unity shell, im getting used to unity, its fluid and looks nice. When I need photoshop or MS Visio I can always hop over to windows with a quick reboot.

And I would welcome Mr.Gates to compete with NASA, the more competition the better!

ETA: By getting used to it. I meant I thought it was tacky when it first came out, but its more polished and functional now im not afraid to admit I like unity shell.

I worked as a technology director for 16 years here in Texas. This spanned the beginning of the building of networks in the public schools in our area up to just a couple of years ago. From the beginning we had the battle between Microsoft and Novell with a few others. I worked for an education cooperative of, at the time, 20 schools and we were the first to put in any kind of small network in virtually all of them. When we, I, installed, and often did the full wiring job, for these small networks I gave each school their choice of the two network OS’s. It worked out that I installed about ¼ to 1/3 of the systems with Novell and the rest Microsoft. Anyone want to guess which ones consistently died and required the most time to maintain? That’s right – Novell. Not being a dyed-in-the-wool computerphile I didn’t realize until later that Novell was, at its core, a Linux system.

Our parent school had a Novell network but we were physically and financially independent of them so I chose the NT networking system from the beginning. Our parent school’s tech director was a fairly recent graduate of the local state college that pushed Novell incessantly to the point of it attaining a cult-like status. This was always a mystery to me because the other tech director was always complaining about not knowing whether or not her servers would be up and running from one day to the next whenever she got into school. When you throw in the half dozen versions of Client 32 that Novell put out in that first school year I was working in this field and what it did to Windows 95 and 98 it’s no wonder that our Region Center finally decreed after a few years that the schools in their area would be Microsoft environments or pretty much be on their own. Such was my introduction into the Microsoft/Linux debate.

Fast forward to the last three years of my stint as a tech person. The co-operative was running out of money due to falling student count in their charge so I and a few others got canned. They handed my office network over to the parent school’s tech department, some pretty capable people I must say, and I went to work an hour and a half north of that location at another school that had just installed a young guy with a Masters in Computer Science who was also, as I understood, the president of a statewide Linux users’ organization. I have every respect in the world for this guy. He’s very smart and capable. I learned a ton of stuff from him regardless of our age difference because of his enthusiasm for Linux and its various flavors but, like so many Linux lovers, he was completely blind to the fact that realizing their dream of booting Microsoft off the planet is just that – a dream.

Because his desire to install Linux Operating Systems campus wide he launched a very expensive network overhaul in a pretty well impoverished school district. This isn’t to say improvements were needed but computerphiles aren’t always known for their patience levels, now, are we? The new servers would easily heat the Admin building on their own due to their multiple multi-cored processors and gigs of memory in them as well as the rows of UPSs and switches. The main cost, however, was the Linux based server software that was to run virtual instances of Windows on, ideally, all of the student workstations on campus so you can imagine the computing power his server bank must have required.

I had to leave that school due to the cost of gas (the hour and a half commute, one way, twice a day cost me too much after gas went over 3 bucks) about the time this system was in its trial phase in one of the campus computer labs and, to my knowledge, it has yet to be extended, after three years or so, to any of the other computers on campus. What was sold to the school as a system that would keep them from having to buy a new computer lab’s worth of PCs every year because the old PCs could run virtual instances of any OS regardless of their level of technology turned out to cost the school about 5 or more years of computer lab’s worth of new computers up front. In the end, after I left, my former boss was hired away from the school by the same company who was developing the software and is living, I hope, comfortably working from home on one side of the state while the company is based on the other side. The superintendant that authorized all this over my warnings was basically fired for this and other troubles the community charged him with after that school year. He and I still remain friends, however. I’ve never heard from my old director, though. Such is the fate of those who don’t completely, totally and unquestioningly believe…

Continued on next post -

So much for my experience with Linus T.’s dream of free software for everyone! I don’t know if my former supervisor ever managed to balance this touted aspect of Linux with the reality of what he did to the school system but his enthusiasm, as far as I know, remains undiminished to this day. He tried his best to get the teachers to use Open Office, they hated it. He tried to institute Ubuntu in some of the classrooms and was almost nailed to the 50 yard line of the football field – there may have even been a plan… I still have Ubuntu on half of my P3 laptop’s hard drive and use its installation CD occasionally to troubleshoot my personal Windows machines if I mess them up. I also watched as he crashed his school laptop multiple times over the year and a half we worked together tweaking his Ubuntu installation with one download after another from that “trusted” Linux clearing house, whatever they call it. Nor could he ever get the “free” Linux-based OS cloning software he wanted to install for the campus to work either. Which brings me to another point in this debate.

Whether you choose to believe me or not, in my decade or so of being a tech director and network admin of several networks I have never, NEVER, N-E-V-E-R had one of my Microsoft servers go down on me due to OS errors. Hardware, yes, but from NT to Server 2007 – not one. I’ve helped others who have had their servers go down and found they were almost universally bad installs or configurations from the beginning. I toyed with certification in the beginning but it became obvious that it was a fool’s game after a while – which is another complete and different discussion.

I do believe that Linux definitely has its place. I marveled at the few minutes it took to install one of the Ubuntu server versions as opposed to hours and hours for Microsoft’s server OS’s. Ubuntu seemed to be very stable in that application and I think that is what my former supervisor installed his very expensive virtual workstation software on. That being said the analogy I finally settled on for Linux vs. Microsoft is this: Linux is like going down to your local car dealer and buying a car – in a box. You have to put it together yourself and, hence, its lower up - front cost. Microsoft’s OS comes fully assembled and, therefore, costs more. Yes, you’ll have recalls from time to time and there are little p.o.s. hackers out there that want to steal your “car” just to show … someone … that they can. 95% of the people out there don’t have time to assemble their own vehicle and don’t care to. There are those few who live for it and I was once one of them. The older you get, however, the more you just want things to work and go about the other business of your life. I work on my XP machines and my road vehicles. I’ll get a new car or truck in the future and I’m planning on getting a Windows 7 PC sometime soon, too, because it’s become pretty obvious that XP is dead meat. But am I going to get W8? Hell, no. No more than I’m going to get a Linux OS or a Ford Pinto in a box! Look what it did to North Korea's missile launch system! LOL!

I cannot understand why they were not using it to begin with. It is the most customizable operating system available, and for something of that nature I cannot fathom why they went with something else. I think that a lot of their systems contain custom operating systems, or did at one time, but I would suspect they would be based off of linux, but maybe not. I almost always use nothing but linux. I advocate everyone to use it as well.

First of all, it is open source. I hate corporations like Microsoft, who attempt to monopolize the OS industry. Being able to modify the OS in various ways is essential to many scientific and academic systems, and that is why most of them use linux. And nowadays linux is almost as user friendly as windows. Well at least some systems. But they also allow the user to do things they cannot do in windows. A system like Ubuntu allows the user to start working straight after installation, without having to install drivers, etc. I would think that very computer illiterate people should stick with windows for now, but if you are semi literate with computers, you can solve any problem that crops up in linux. Especially Ubuntu. Any question one may have has been asked before, usually multiple times, especially if it is a beginner level question.

Linux on the ISS. Very cool!

I do indeed love Linux. It's a great OS, free, quite stable, quite configurable, can deployed on just about any architecture, etc. A wonderful, global, community developed project.

< rant >

That said, Windows is a wonderful OS, too. I work with enterprise clients everyday and we use Microsoft products quite extensively. It performs quite well for all the tasks we've given it. Anyone that has a career in the enterprise world of IT systems/management/solutions/engineering knows Microsoft does its job well in these environments.

They each have pros and cons, both can be made to do great things as long as the engineer knows how to make each OS, each platform, do his/her bidding. If you have the skills, you can engineer anything to do anything.

It doesn't surprise me that Microsoft was selected for functions of the ISS years ago. It does surprise me that XP was still being used... Especially when migrating up to 7/2K8 is rather cheap and painless when you really consider it. $100 bucks or so per computer and boom, you're good.

But anyways, Linux seems like a particularly useful OS to use for ISS. Not only is it free - which saves a few $grand for the computers aboard ISS - but Linux is an excellent choice for a highly mission specific platform/application. It's just so open and accessible and can be made to do just about anything. A coder's playground. I'm sure NASA/JPL/etc. have all had to write their own software and drivers for all their stuff anyways, so why not let the developers work out of Nix?

Anyways, I don't think Microsoft is getting a fair shake in terms of OS appreciation. We can all think what we will of the company itself, but Microsoft products are actually quite solid and reliable when properly managed. They seem to be going thru a design/culture renaissance lately too... It will be interesting to see how the company and their products evolve in the next few years.

But to end this post, I gotta say... Very cool to see 'Nix aboard the ISS. The OS certainly deserves some credit.

< /rant >