Flying penguins
posted by Nathan Zeldes on May 14, 2007
So, I’m heading home from the US, and I fly on this Boeing 777, which is a really well-designed plane. Each seat has this touch screen in front, and every passenger can select from dozens of movies and shows, and view them at any time, in any order, with freeze, rewind and FF controls. With hundreds of passengers, this implies a central hard disk based video system of awesome proportions. Neat!
So guess what happens halfway across the Atlantic?
The flight attendant declares on the PA system that she’s sorry, some folks aren’t getting the video right, and she has to stop and restart the system. Yes, you got it: she has to do a reboot. The movie disappears, and every screen on the plane shows scrolling lines of techie text, as the system is loading this and initializing that. And at the top, what do you know? The cute little penguin, Tux. Hundreds of penguins, one per seat. This jetliner is running Linux!
Whoever said penguins can’t fly?…
Comments (22)
tagged: Airplane, entertainment, Linux, video
Comments
May 15 | Rebecca said:
That got a major chuckle from my IT/Network security husband. Amazing.
May 15 | Rich said:
This totally saved me from going insane on my overnight flight to Amsterdam.
May 15 | Ali Daniali said:
Any idea what distro it was using?
May 15 | dusty said:
A vast majority of the entertainment systems on airplanes are run by Linux. For example, Panasonic Avionics makes systems that will run on every Boeing and Airbus plane that flies. The latest Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic systems are all powered completely by Linux.
For what it’s worth, the entire system probably didn’t have to be reboot, but that’s all that the Flight Attendants are probably trained to do.
May 15 | Dunkirk said:
Yes, Linux has been used in these systems for quite awhile now. The depressing part of the story is that you only knew because it crashed, and required resetting EVERYone’s system to fix it.
May 16 | Nathan Zeldes said:
If I’m not mistaken it was Red Hat. And as a matter of fact, it crashed twice - once on my way to the US, when the reboot did not help and we were left without any movies for the entire long flight; and once on the way back, when it did help. They must still be low on the learning curve…
May 16 | Asbjørn Ulsberg said:
I guess they should start running Ubuntu, to make the experience a bit more user friendly. ;-)
May 16 | Tomas Mcinerney said:
every time I fly to SFO the ‘reboot’ is a standard procedure. Lucky you where not in my seat Nathan I had no in flight entertainment at all - I hope it’s better on the way back (note to myself…change seats when checking in…avoid 61H!)
May 16 | Heath said:
I want to know how you guys get to do business travel in planes that even have this type of entertainment in the first place :-).
May 16 | Koichi Suzuki said:
I’ve just found a photo in Flickr. Some one like you had the same experience on the plane.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/colinj/17308794/
May 17 | Nathan Zeldes said:
Hey Heath, this was in Coach (aka Economy, aka Steerage :-)
It would be less surprising if it were in an upper class cabin… but these days technology is so cheap and ubiquitous that it can be given to the huddled masses.
Jun 17 | SeismicMike said:
Nice! Though I’m a little perturbed… Did you say they had to reboot Linux? What is happening to this world!?
Jun 17 | spuffler said:
Not too many modern releases still use this boot splash screen. Would be interested in knowing which release version and which distro this setup uses. And I would also like to know the kernel version, etc…
Jun 18 | JAB_au said:
Standards have obviously dropped when it comes to Linux development, or maybe someone has stuffed something up. (It’s easy enough to do actually)
Jun 18 | MacDaddy said:
Heath, when i came across the Atlantic .. 11 years ago i had a system that was probably not as amazing, but had an action fighter in it, i was only 6.. so i didn’t take full advantage of it. But it was there. Though Lufthansa does not have this on there Atlantic flights.Sadly :/
Jun 18 | Website Design said:
hip hip HORRRAYY!!!! linux on planes.
Jun 18 | Nick said:
Of course penguins can fly!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrxmpihCjqw
Jun 18 | MB said:
I was flying business class to Taipei on EVA and had a similar experience. In this case, it was clear each passenger had a separate system, because only mine rebooted.
Jun 21 | Magnus said:
Typical for linux to not work right. Reboot after reboot.
Jun 24 | Patrick said:
I was just on a flight from Germany on Lufthansa, and on the way there the movies stopped working, the reboot clearly showed the reason the movies weren’t working.
They were running Windows…
needless to say, i think it was the CE, but it never ended up working right. The flight home everything worked fine though.
Jun 28 | Cyrus said:
You shouldn’t have to reboot linux.
Jun 30 | Elduder said:
I’ve traveled with 777 many times and the video system has been always stable. never faced a reboot scenario. Your case is very rare. Linux rocks.. how many times you’ve seen the billboards, announcement screens, etc running windows showing the crash screen!! soooo many times i guess..