US Navy Subs to run Power PC Linux on Apple Xserves

[htuttle]

Here's an interesting turn of the worm. Apparently the Navy didn't want to have to tow any subs back into port, like they had to with the missile frigates running Windows NT. And yes, I'm aware that the subs will only be using Linux/Xserves for sonar imaging, not running the whole sub.

Loveland, Colorado -- 06 August 2003 -- Terra Soft Solutions, Inc., leading developer of integrated PowerPC Linux solutions, has been awarded the contract to fulfill a unique sonar imaging system for the United States Navy through defense contractor Lockheed Martin.

(snip)

United States Navy submarines utilize on-board HPC clusters for the realtime image processing. These systems are revised and upgraded on a rotational basis. Lockheed Martin has chosen to move with the Apple Xserves and Yellow Dog Linux. This combination provides a solution twice as dense, less power consumptive, and higher performance than the previous solution at a similar cost.

(more press release blah, blah blah at link)
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/news/2003-08-06.shtml

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

1. great news for linux and Apple

bad news for Microsoft :) On the whole, this is good. I don't think the US military should be using any system they don't have the source to.

[markbark]

4. ...and perhaps the USN

was still remembering this little debacle.


--MAB

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. There is actually...

A Linux sonar program on Sourceforge. It is GUI-based, full color output and has a variety of display modes. The display is a lot better than the green monochrome one that is presently used on US Navy subs.

The coolest of beans.

[tsakshaug]

3. can't wait

to forward this to my windows only fellow techies.

[West Coast Democrat]

5. I heard years ago that the Fed Gov't prefers Apple Servers

because they're much more difficult to hack into.

[ianbruce]

6. WindowsNT Cripples the USS Yorktown

http://www.gcn.com/archives/gcn/1998/july13/cov2.htm

Army.mil uses Macs -- way more secure. They got tired of constant hacks and security patches... and putting Windows in a submarine hansn't been a good idea since the Seaview.

[frylock]

7. they aren't any more difficult to hack than a Win box..

it's just that there are so few Mac based networks out there, that nobody really bothers to try and hack them. If Macs were utilized more for large scale networks, you can believe that the vulnerabilities would be exposed.

[htuttle]

8. That's false

Learn more about Macs.

On Mac OS 7/8/9, there was basically nothing to hack INTO, so they were pretty much 'unhackable'.

On Mac OS X, it's about as hard to hack as Free/Net/OpenBSD, where most of it's non-GUI system comes from.

Probably the vast majority of Windows hacks come from 2 places:
a) The 'webserver' called IIS, and it's windows-specific, bug-ridden CGI programs
b) The windows implementation of NetBIOS/CIFS

In addition, there are enough holes in the whole 'Office Macro' scripting that's all tangled up in all of their software, such as their mail client, that it's far easier for foreign code to find it's way to your hard drive than on either Macs or Linux.

In addition, both Macs and Linux use a Unix-based file access privilege system that means even if your user account somehow gets a virus (an unlikely event in itself), it's much, much, much harder for that virus to infect any parts of the machine that could compromise the machine (ie., it would still need to get 'root' privileges to really infect you).

It's not just lack of popularity, it's engineering that makes a difference.