I'D like to start by asking you a series of seemingly unrelated questions. Have you watched Shrek or Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone? Have you flown on Continental, Virgin America or Singapore Airlines? Do you drive a BMW, Fiat or Renault car? Are you serving in the United States Army? Have you ever bought anything online using Paypal? Have you ever stayed in a Sheraton hotel? Or travelled by train in Canada?
Don't worry, I'm not about to try to sell you something; rather, my aim is to enlighten you. Unless you're a self-confessed geek like me, you probably don't care how all these things, and many more, are created, run or maintained. You just want to know that your car will start, your movie will play in synch with the sound, your hotel room is ready and your flight or train will arrive on time. That's perfectly understandable, but here's the thing.
One of the main reasons that all of those things happen, allowing you to go about your daily lives without a care in the world, is... Linux. Yes, Linux, that arcane computer operating system so beloved of beardy, bespectacled types. Let's examine my assertion in greater detail, starting with Singapore Airlines and something called KrisWorld. KrisWorld is not, as you may think, any relation to Wayne's World though it is all about entertainment. KrisWorld is the in-flight entertainment system used by Singapore Airlines, offering video and audio on-demand for all passengers, whether in cattle class or master of the universe class.
But here's the really good bit it also includes PC services in every seat, by way of Red Hat Linux. KrisWorld is based on Panasonic Avionics Corporation's eX2 in-flight entertainment system and was jointly developed by the two companies. The system consists of a central Linux server that connects to a network of PCs installed in every seat on the aircraft. Each economy-class seat is fitted with a 10.6-inch LCD screen that offers resolution of 1,280 pixels by 768 pixels (they're larger in business and first class). When passengers want to watch a movie or listen to a CD, the content is streamed from the KrisWorld server to the seat's computer, which has
40GB of local hard-disk space and is based on a Via Technologies Inc. processor. KrisWorld can also be used as a general purpose PC and every passenger has access to Sun Microsystems' StarOffice application suite. What's more, every seat is fitted with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) port that lets passengers access documents carried on a thumb drive or portable hard disk. The port can also be used to connect a USB keyboard or mouse, making it easier for business travellers to create and edit documents without having to dig out their laptops and power cords.
Singapore Airlines aren't the only aviation company investing in Linux. Virgin America, the Stateside branch of Sir Richard Branson's airline arm, recently announced that all their planes would feature a new, in-flight entertainment system known as RED. And, yes, you've guessed it, RED runs on Linux specifically, Red Hat and Fedora from the seat-back units to the central servers which ship out multimedia content.
When asked recently why they had chosen Linux, the company said it was because of the Linux kernel's stability and the ease of customisation for their specific needs. On the subject of system stability, a Virgin America spokesman said: "Resets or reboots occur in different areas. Because we are trying different open source games, we do notice issues with porting them for example. Over time, we work through those issues. Our inflight team members (flight attendants) have the ability to reboot seats. The seat units also monitor themselves and can reset themselves if they freeze or lose connectivity (a heart-beat) with the head-end."
Are there any other aviation firms using Linux? Well, Continental Airlines have switched over to Linux to power their ticket-reissuing system, while Qantas Airways migrated their datacentre servers to Linux and Spanish airline Spanair are also using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. But Linux isn't just flying high it's on the ground too, and in places you might never imagine. Like at BMW, where they use Xen virtualization technology on Novell's SUSE Linux in their datacentre, and in the BMW Williams Formula 1 team, where a Linux cluster built by Hewlett-Packard carries out high-resolution aerodynamic modelling of team cars.
Or on the German railway network run by Deutsche Bahn, who in late 2004 migrated their servers to Linux. Italian car giants Fiat use a Linux-based system to run their European sales and support network. While the Hyundai motor car company use a Linux cluster built by IBM for crash simulation tests and analysis. It doesn't end there: Thrifty Car Rental run a large percentage of their IT infrastructure on Ubuntu Linux; Volvo use an IBM-built Linux cluster to process vehicle crash test data and the Canadian National Railways use Linux for a wide range of day-to-day business functions. The French are in on the Linux act, too: Renault have just announced they will be using Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, while the French police are joining their government and several ministries in switching to Linux.
Peugeot Citroƫn, another European carmaker, have a contract with Novell to migrate over 20,000 desktops and 2000 servers to SUSE Enterprise Linux. You might be forgiven for thinking that all the examples quoted so far have been, well, let's be honest, a bit dull. OK, how about Hollywood? It doesn't get any more glamorous than that, does it? Let's say you're on your Virgin America flight, watching a movie on their Linux-powered entertainment system, and that movie is Shrek, or Harry Potter. Well, much of the animation work done by Dreamworks, producers of Shrek (plus Shark Tale, Antz and Bee Movie), was done on HP computers running Red Hat Linux. And a lot of the CGI work done in the first Harry Potter film (and The Last Samurai and Plane Of The Apes) was done using an Open Source, Linux-based application called CinePaint.
In fact, Hollywood's visual effects industry is probably in the vanguard of Linux utilisation. And it's not a small-scale revolution, either: The firms serving La-La Land's 'A' list egos run rooms full of Linux servers (hey, there's a lot of airburshing to be done!). Pixar, Digital Domain, Dreamworks all the big boys and plenty of small ones too. DreamWorks had over 2,000 Linux-based CPUs online by the summer of 2001. Their Shrek blockbuster was rendered on more than 1,000 mostly Linux machines, while Pixar have machines running Linux in their production and software development studios.
It's widely accepted within the movie industry that this Linux tidal wave began with the massive hit, Titanic. Linux-based applications were used by Digital Domain to render frames for the movie, specifically, on many of the watery scenes. Movies are all about box office and money so that brings us nicely to another area where Linux is making ground, the finance industry. In Brazil, Banrisul, one of the largest banks in South America, run all their ATM machines via a Linux operating system. While Paypal, used by online shoppers the world over, run their web presence and middleware tier on thousands of Linux servers.
The next time you check in to a Sheraton hotel, remember that your booking was made on a reservations system run by Linux. Or, if you're used to more modest accommodation, as a member of the United States Army, you might be interested to know that by 2015, all that mighty organisation's networking will be done on Linux systems. I'm certain there are many, many more areas of our every day lives where Linux systems play an important role. But this brief list alone should be enough to convince you that Linux isn't just for beardy geeks, after all.
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