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Comment by Maarten88 | Hacker News Reader

It is probably a wise move for them to move to Linux, having many other systems running Linux too.

But Windows security is a poor argument imo. If they had upgraded to Vista in 2008 (which was working quite well by then), or had better managed those laptops, that incident would not have happened. Now, five years later, they still have not upgraded to a modern Windows version. After so many years, anything is going to be more secure than XP.

Nowadays, you have to patch and update to have a secure system. Freezing the software to guarantee stability makes it inherently unsecure, Windows or Linux. There is no difference other than the larger base of existing virusses for Windows.

Also I wonder what this means for power usage, which is not unimportant in space. Windows still gets longer use out of most laptop batteries than Linux.

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> Nowadays, you have to patch and update to have a secure system. Freezing the software to guarantee stability makes it inherently unsecure, Windows or Linux. There is no difference other than the larger base of existing virusses for Windows.

The extent and effort needed in keeping a updated system running is directly related to the size of the installed system. If all you got is ~30 carefully picked packages to create a fully custom ISS installation, its not that hard to go through every single line of patches that is needed. This is a huge difference between windows vista/7/8 where such review is not even possible to do and the number of "packages" is astronomical larger.

> Also I wonder what this means for power usage, which is not unimportant in space. Windows still gets longer use out of most laptop batteries than Linux.

I would almost call FUD there, but I will assume good faith. Back at the time with vista, linux system tended to have several times more battery time than windows. After windows 7 was release, and that linux had a power management bug, Ubuntu got a reputation for worse power management than windows.

Now after Linux 3 kernel, linux machine tend to again have much better power management than windows 8. There are some direct variation depending on what distro you install and what additional fluff that is running in the background. Also, EFI BIOS is know for a slightly worse performance for linux vs windows.

Anybody know if they run 2.6 or some newer kernel?

> I would almost call FUD there, [...]

This depends on the combination of hardware and distro. And Windows simply has the advantage that every hardware manufacturer out there is developing for Windows. So yes, you can get similar power efficiency with Linux as with Windows. And you can get better efficiency than stock Windows, if you are willing to work a bit. However, if you compare a stock $DISTRO install with a stock Windows, then chances are that you get less efficiency because the manufacturer did optimize for Windows.

In case of the ISS, I do not have the slightest idea if this matters. But I would not be too surprised if the ISS guys are quite happy because they now operate a 22W Ivy Bridge in place designed for a 60W P4.

If all you got is ~30 carefully picked packages to create a fully custom ISS installation

With 30 packages, what you've got is a toy, perhaps a single-purpose embedded installation, not a useful OS; and IMO the knowledge required to curate such minimalism has a high cost. I spend far more time updating a ~40G Linux installation than I do Windows - Ubuntu's package manager accosts me at least once a week. At least the pestering for reboots is a lot easier to ignore - I have a script in a loop on Windows, after once losing work to an ill-timed reboot prompt stealing focus.

EFI BIOS is know for a slightly worse performance for linux vs windows

No shit. I wasted a whole day - last Friday, to be exact - figuring out how to get Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS working on a modern UEFI machine with full disk encryption and Nvidia graphics card. UEFI doesn't supply old BIOS text routines, and Ubuntu GRUB2 defaults don't work, such that when you switch from nouveau's hilariously unstable drivers (hard X.Org crash if you move windows too quickly) to nvidia-current you don't get a prompt at boot-up to enter your password - just a black screen of apparent death. You have to configure a framebuffer that works with the Nvidia card and live with NVRM's kernel log warnings about only supporting VGA text consoles.

Most of all I really resent Ubuntu forcing me to learn how all these pieces are put together, so I could fix it. Using it as a desktop OS daily, I remain more convinced than ever that it is best put to work via an ssh session in a different OS. The command-line is the only UI on it that reliably works.

> Most of all I really resent Ubuntu forcing me to learn how all these pieces are put together, so I could fix it. Using it as a desktop OS daily, I remain more convinced than ever that it is best put to work via an ssh session in a different OS. The command-line is the only UI on it that reliably works.

Why is it Canonicals fault Microsoft paid off (not exclusively, I know at Intel was also involved) and pushed for UEFI on all modern motherboards? Bios was working fine for a decade with Linux, UEFI has been terrible because there have been efforts in its adoption to only target Windows and obfuscate or just outright not support other OSes on some boards.

The ISS will be running Debian[1], not Ubuntu.

[1] http://www.eteknix.com/international-space-station-starts-us...

Your experience doesnt really apply to how production systems are managed. And 30 packages is enough and is useful. Production systems dont update themselves just because theres a new package in the repo, thats what people regular users do.

In production systems updates are rolled out only if there is a must have benefit, or a serious security patch.

I dont really get your point if you dont like linux then dont use it, its pretty easy to manage.

> If they had upgraded to Vista in 2008 ....

Keeping your Windows up-to-date might require updating (some of) your hardware too. And hardware updates are expensive if they have to be delivered to low earth orbit.

Yes. We have lab PCs here still running Windows NT because the upgrades for the hardware are either unavailable or would be prohibitively expensive (> $20K) and still not implement all the functionality. We tend to hide these from our well-protected corporate network behing a boat-anchor PC running XP with all the service packs and antivirus. We will run these systems until they can no longer be repaired because management does not want to spend the money to replace them.

> If they had upgraded to Vista in 2008

For that, they'd probably have to certify that all their software and flight-certified hardware functions correctly with Vista. They'd have to start certifying them for Longhorn in 2003.

I don't think that is that different from a move to Linux. Certainly, if you do a Linux kernel upgrade, you will want to recertify. And Linux kernels may not have longer shelf live, either:

- https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html lists 2.6.32 as the oldest kernel with long term support. It was released in December 2009, not yet 4 years ago.

- Redhat supports their releases for 10+3 years. That is in the same league as XP.

- Ubuntu's long term support is 5 years.

Also, I think part of the problem is that astronauts will bring their own laptops. It may be hard to enforce them to run these long term support kernels (yes, that sounds stupid for an office building where access is that controlled, but space organizations have to take the psychological health of their personnel into account, too)

> if you do a Linux kernel upgrade, you will want to recertify.

The difference is that, if you automate the certification process, you can run it against the bleeding edge branches all the time well before the packages are incorporated into the official release. Any sign of trouble will happen months, if not years, before it's time to upgrade.

You can have a cozy enough relationship with Microsoft, but I doubt they'll let you put their sources on your Jenkins (or BuildBot) servers so that you can run your certification tests continuously. To say nothing about making the Windows build process CI-friendly. That in itself is an undertaking bound to take longer than the shelf life of any operating system.

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