[ale] Delta in-flight is Linux!

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

On Wed, November 20, 2013 10:48 am, JD wrote:
> On 11/20/2013 09:13 AM, Jim Kinney wrote:
>> Greetings from Cambridge, UK!
>>
>> On the Delta flight over I noticed the entertainment system had Tux  on
>> it
>> during boot up. I saw enough of the startup to it's a RedHat based
>> system using
>> "red boot" which is RHEL4 I think.
>> The GUI is a custom one that needs some more polish (clunky touch screen
>> fubar'ed into a non-English mode and there was no route back other than
>> rebooting my display system.).
>> Pictures of a boot screen were taken while taxiing to runway. Can't post
>> from
>> here without size edits but will later for those interested.
>>
>
> It has been the same system for at least 3 yrs. On one trip, the entire
> setup
> died about 40 minutes into the 8+ hr flight, never to work again. Got 15K
> miles
> for that inconvenience by complaining and saying nice things about the
> crew.
> KLM's system has a nicer GUI and is also Linux.

I think it's even longer than that.  I believe that Lufthansa also uses a
Linux-based system.

However, Delta has been rolling out a "software upgrade" recently which,
IMHO, is a downgrade.  The system is IMHo less responsive to touches (I
feel I have to press harder now, and there is a significant delay between
a press and a reaction from the system) and the in-flight map doesn't do
the auto-zooming and info-page swapping that the old system used, making
it much less useful and informative.

-derek


-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant