ISS switches from Windows to Linux, for improved reliability

extremetech.com

10 points·Libertatea··4 comments

Windows xp would run for months without any issues. Its all the 8 million background apps and crappy drivers that caused the problems, but windows itself on a good hardware runs fine. So does linux.

On the other hand Linux is a lot easier to troubleshoot should something break, and it is much easier to disable or completely remove unnecessary subsystems.

I had a Linux-powered laptop on the boat that was critical to a particular training task the CO liked, and it was somehow wedged by a bad shutdown.

Knowing what little I did of Linux, bash, etc. at the time I (a random LTJG) was able to figure out how to get the system to boot again, which allowed us to continue training without having to choose between breaking comms or going without that training software for the majority of the remainder of the patrol.

“We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable.”

As a person who installed windows 8 three days ago (on a second hdd, thank God) to give it a try (mostly because I wanted to play some games I discovered), and yesterday watched it BSOD itself to oblivion for no good reason, I agree with this statement.

The most surprising part of this for me was that the machines weren't running linux in the first place.

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