

Linux To Become Exclusive OS Of The International Space Station - moo
http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112844374/linux-windows-xp-os-iss-international-space-station-opslan-051213/

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ColinWright
Finally! This story has been submitted _so_ many times over the past few
weeks, it's nice to see it finally get some traction.

Other sources may have different levels of detail, or different takes on the
story, so in case anyone is interested in reading the story from other
sources, here are some of the other submissions:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5668312> (zd.net)

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669927> (zdnet.com)

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5677045> (linuxfoundation.org)

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5680490> (extremetech.com) (4 comments)

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5686586> (gizmodo.com)

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5687720> (readwrite.com)

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5689142> (venturebeat.com)

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5695447> (telegraph.co.uk)

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5711378> (vice.com)

Interestingly, very few comments or upvotes on any of them.

------
vy8vWJlco
_"Back in 2008, a Russian cosmonaut managed to take a laptop to the ISS that
spread the W32.Gammima.AG worm to all the other laptops aboard the station."_

Holy crap.

~~~
winter_blue
Why is it always the Russians or Chinese? Why isn't there a American or
Western European scientist/cosmonaut committing similar mistakes/blunders?

~~~
ghshephard
Different cultures, different attitudes towards these things.

I was recently in Aschaffenburg (Germany) doing interoperability tests with
some of our networking equipment and a large SCADA vendor. About two hours
into the tests, we ran into some problems, which we quickly identified as
being related to the firewall on one of the test laptops in their lab having a
very restrictive firewall rule (wouldn't allow ping). We had to wait for the
better part of two hours while they got approval to adjust the firewall rules
to allow ping from another device in the same lab. Note that this was a lab
laptop, and these were technically sophisticated people - they understood the
implication of allowing ping - it's just that their policy/procedures with
regards to security were very, very strict.

I can guarantee you, in any interop tests I've done in Silicon Valley - there
would be zero friction (even with the utility companies, enterprise software
vendors, scada vendors) around opening up icmp on a lab laptop firewall.

I cite this as an example where Americans (at least those in Norcal) are more
lax regarding security than another culture (in this case, whatever was
prevalent in the part of Germany Aschaffenburg is located in)

~~~
kmasters
You can guarantee that? I dont think so, Im not a sysop but if I was, you
would need to explain why ICMP needs to be open.

Whether Im in Norcal or not. Most sane organizations are going to turn off
ping, its not a cultural thing and it doesnt seem like you faced any friction
since you got it opened in 2 hours.

Ive been working here in norcal my whole life and I dont see a culture of lax
security in shops that have actual security requirements. Its not the country
is the quality of the network administration team.

~~~
ghshephard
I've been a network engineer for 15+ years, and I'm saying that 95% of all
employees I deal with in the Bay Area would not think twice about opening up a
firewall rule and allowing you to ping a lab machine, particularly when the
purpose of your engagement was to verify end-end network connectivity. They
would make the call, themselves, on the spot.

The reason I bring this up, is that I've been told by a number of my
colleagues that german culture, in particular, has a tendency to be more rule
structured than in the United States, so, if there was a security policy in
place, it had a greater chance of being adhered to in Germany, than in the
Norcal.

And the entire point of my little anecdote was to make it clear, that there is
broad diversity of attitudes towards rules, policy - and that the "United
States" doesn't have a lock on following rules/policy.

------
belorn
A good and suitable use of Linux based systems. They can now install custom
installations with packages that are individually vetted. They also got source
code, so there is no limit on how careful reviews and (continuously) testing
that can be made. During crunch time, they can even crowdsource.

The malware threat will also be lower, mostly thanks to not installing every
single default program and service that windows come pre-install. So long they
are not completely lazy and just install a massive DVD sized distro like
Ubuntu, the attack surface and number of packages needed to vet should be
quite manageable.

------
mh-
_(slightly)_ more detailed article:
[http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/155392-international-
spac...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/155392-international-space-
station-switches-from-windows-to-linux-for-improved-reliability)

in related news, Debian 6 apparently ships with support for _the International
Space Station_ , but still can't manage to sleep/resume peacefully.

~~~
claudius
It slept/resumed quite wonderfully here, and it continues to do so after the
upgrade to Wheezy/Debian 7.

Did you break something?

~~~
brokenparser
More likely a bug in the ACPI support of the specific motherboard model.

------
NotUncivil
If they still favor ThinkPads on the ISS they can expect a pleasant Linux
experience.

------
fixxer
Is anyone else horrified that they were running Windows?

~~~
DanBC
On personal laptops? On machines that just do dietary stuff? No, it's okay.

It's a bit scary that this isn't the first time malware has got into space nor
onto the Space Station.

Considering how intrusive the procedures must be for astronauts I'm gently
surprised that intensive malware scanning isn't a requirement for anything
that goes into space.

~~~
bad_user
"Malware scanning" is a pretty dumb process. All it does is to check for
certain _known_ signatures. Scanning for malware doesn't fix the problem.

~~~
DanBC
Yes, I agree that malware scanning is dumb.

But in this case it would have prevented malware from being taken into space.

------
bdz
Which distro?

~~~
a1a
Debian 6

Source:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/10/iss_linux_debian_dep...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/10/iss_linux_debian_deployment/)

~~~
alberich
Now that is what i would call a "success story". How many distros can claim to
be used in the space? :)

I'm glad to see Debian being recognized for it's rock solid stability.

~~~
takluyver
On a similar theme, the developers of matplotlib once got a polite enquiry
about a bug report which mentioned that "the feature is needed for the Phoenix
project, and their arrival at Mars will be in March sometime."

Needless to say, the bug got fixed. A team from JPL is listed in matplotlib's
credits for various improvements.

------
X4
Finally it becomes the respect it deserves. I hope the project will receive
more respect and openness by those damn hardware manufacturers.

Keeping hardware artificially closed, needs an end.

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sytelus
wow... So $150 billion ISS was using _Windows XP_ until now?!!!

------
shmerl
Great news.

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QuantumGuy
How is it not already the exclusive OS?

~~~
aclevernickname
it seems the debian guys are going to just drag us kicking and screaming to
that destintion.

~~~
QuantumGuy
What do you mean?

~~~
aclevernickname
Ah. you meant the exclusive OS for the space station. I was thinking far more
broadly. :)

------
tantalor
Laptops? On laps? Weightlessly?

