Turbulence strikes Linux on a plane
- Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
Linux fans will be delighted to know that their operating system of choice is being used to power an airplane's multimedia system. Not such great news, though, was its fallibility, as recounted by Brandon Watts at OS Weekly, who tangled with Tux, the Linux penguin mascot, while returning from Paris.
While others on the plane could use touch screens to watch movies and TV or play games, Watts' screen showed a Red Hat error message--"a black and white boot screen of doom," he said. He figured out that touching the bottom-right corner of the screen repeatedly restarted the system, but it crashed 15 minutes into the movie. During a second attempt, others started experiencing the same problems, and ultimately the entire system crashed and had to be rebooted.
"I don't know about you, but the word 'reboot' isn't exactly something that I want to hear while flying in a plane at 30,000 feet in the air, even though it was funny to see Tux plastered on hundreds of screens at the same time," he said.