So it’s no secret that some parts of the army in the USA and my country (UK) sometimes use legacy software like DOS for niche roles as they’re robust including older versions of Windows.
But… where does Linux fit in this? It’s a kernel OS that’s used in top of the line supercomputers, workstations, medical equipment and weather stations.
I imagine some aspects of this would be military secrets but how do they use it? I know that Linux was used for certain space projects with NASA but I’m talking about army applications.
TLDR : Does the penguin OS power shooty shooty machines and tanks
I’ve heard that the DoD uses RHEL pretty extensively. RHEL in the US Military
That article says that the US military has the largest single install base for RHEL in the world, but that was about 15 years ago, I don’t know if that’s still true.
Apparently back then the US nuclear sub fleet and its sonar systems also ran on RHEL.
I suspect lots of military hardware runs some form of *Nix or BSD type system. Many embedded systems run some *Nix type OS, and a huge portion of the developed world’s weaponry is smart, so it it full of low power embedded systems and custom SoCs.
Red Hat has long benefitted from being the primary enterprise Linux company based in the US (no, we don’t count Oracle). SUSE created US-based Rancher Government Solutions to get some of that business and it seems to have been getting a lot of interest, despite being early days. They did a good job of focusing on modern technologies and immutable systems.
Don’t look too deeply into this unless you’re comfortable discovering that the military and security state is a prolific contributor to many open source projects.
SELinux was a product of the NSA. Maybe the best thing that agency has done.
They also created ghidra! Probably second best
Also PRISM. Maybe the third—wait, wrong side of the array—worst.
I don’t find that problematic as they are the ones how are likely to push for good security and reliability
Didn’t they at one point use a bank of PS3s when they still allowed for Linux boot options?
Yeah I recall the USAF deploying a ps3 cluster years ago
I’m not sure about the military, but yes a number of researchers used PS3s for cheap computing power.
Check out the World of Tanks forums for information.
There are many reasons Microsoft software is only “good” (and I’m using that word loosely) in business and home settings. Can you imagine a rocket taking off and windows suddenly “rebooting to complete updates” (or whatever it is that it says along those lines)?
Rockets probably use a dedicated OS that is safety validated. Getting something validated for critical operations is a massive endeavor.
Correct, missiles use something like RTEMS, which is named because it was used for missiles (no really, it originally stood for Real Time Executive for Missile Systems) and the operating demands for missiles have to be real-time given their unique edge cases.
Disclaimer: I worked on RTEMS in College
Linux distro NixOS is used by mil-tech company Anduril
I’ve heard of Palantir, now Anduril… What’s next, Saruman Ltd.? Uruk-Hai-corp? Poor Tolkien doesn’t deserve his mythology being co-opted by war profiteers. :(
BTW: Anduril is a startup from Luckey Palmer, the guy that built the Oculus VR headset in his garage. The later sold Oculus to Meta for 2 billion $. 3 ex Palantir guys started Anduril together with him.
We used it as OS for the tank and airplane simulators, just because it made them cheaper compared to buying 500 Windows licenses
Sadly yes, Linux kill
It depends on what side you are on. At the end of the day a tool is a tool
I said such things too, but one day I ask myself, could I said it in front of people bombed by my tools ? Our tools are not neutral things, but produce and distribute by social relationship that we could fight. Sorry but we the rise of fascism and ecological disaster we could not afford to give up our power as producer to mass murderer
Okay but at the end of the day it’s not like you’re Tony Stark making Jericho missiles.
Linux, encryption, the Internet, heck, computers, are so generalized as a technology that the burden of sin lies with whomever would pervert these tools against their fellow man.
When we rolled into Baghdad, we did it using open source. - Major General Nicholas Justice
When I was in the army the S1 desk jockeys were using dedicated word processors with 8" floppies. Get off my lawn! :-)
Knowing what the army is like, that could have been in 2010 lol
