OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/19405/Fedora_on_the_Final_Frontier Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:37:33 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Comment by anomie http://osnews.com/thread?302903 http://osnews.com/thread?302903 I don't have anything clever to say, but: fun article. Thanks for sharing.

It's a reminder that many high-profile organizations have incorporated Linux/BSD into both their R&D and production environments -- even if they aren't necessarily vocal about doing so. Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (anomie) Comments Well... http://osnews.com/thread?302905 http://osnews.com/thread?302905 Explains the recent themes. ;) Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fretinator) Comments A Time Synchronization Server http://osnews.com/thread?302906 http://osnews.com/thread?302906 That is not a big deal. I believe that SGI servers are the big deal there which are handling extremely high TIFF Pictures from Telescopes, Rovers and other graphical devices NASA own. Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hraq) Comments Cool http://osnews.com/thread?302914 http://osnews.com/thread?302914 It's always a good thing if a large government body is running an open source operating system. People must become more aware of the fact that there are alternatives to Windows as operating system, and they are operating very well. This is just what the open source (operating system) community needs: good PR. Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (IvoLimmen) Comments Astronaut Parking Only http://osnews.com/thread?302916 http://osnews.com/thread?302916 This was a fun article, but the astronaut parking spot was my favorite picture...just struck me. Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (whartung) Comments a geeks wet dream http://osnews.com/thread?302921 http://osnews.com/thread?302921 Space and linux
I would die a happy geek. Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (uproot) Comments RE: a geeks wet dream http://osnews.com/thread?302923 http://osnews.com/thread?302923 I thought you were going to say Sandra Bullock surrounded by a room full of computers in "The Net". Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fretinator) Comments Solaris OS somewhere? http://osnews.com/thread?302942 http://osnews.com/thread?302942 I thought at NASA they were all Solaris OS fanatics but seems that I am wrong.

Why do they use Fedorz? Becuase there is more tech support or because it has some special feature that we do not know????

Why don't they use *BSD or Ubuntu? Slackware?

Thanks.

-2501 Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (2501) Comments RE: Solaris OS somewhere? http://osnews.com/thread?302945 http://osnews.com/thread?302945
I thought at NASA they were all Solaris OS fanatics but seems that I am wrong.

Why do they use Fedorz? Becuase there is more tech support or because it has some special feature that we do not know????

Why don't they use *BSD or Ubuntu? Slackware?

Thanks.

-2501

how much of a userbase does BSD have?.. not much, how much does Slackware have?. not much to warrant NASA using those, why they dont use Ubuntu, i dont know, prolly cause its unstable ;) Fri, 29 Feb 2008 01:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sabz) Comments RE[2]: Solaris OS somewhere? http://osnews.com/thread?302947 http://osnews.com/thread?302947 Unstable??????????? Ubuntu? Slackware????????????????????
Can you be more specific?

Thanks.

-2501 Fri, 29 Feb 2008 01:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (2501) Comments RE[3]: Solaris OS somewhere? http://osnews.com/thread?302949 http://osnews.com/thread?302949
Unstable??????????? Ubuntu? Slackware????????????????????
Can you be more specific?

Thanks.

-2501


They are stable and fine ... but you have to remember that it comes down to the user base in a lot of cases. The more people who like X means the easier it is to get approval/consensus to use X. While the BSD's are great OS's, there are probably far fewer people pushing for them as there (at least seem to be) fewer users of the OS's. The same thing goes with Slackware. It's a nice and simple distribution but in terms of users it seems to not be very high on the list. Fri, 29 Feb 2008 02:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ashcrow) Comments RE[3]: Solaris OS somewhere? http://osnews.com/thread?302951 http://osnews.com/thread?302951
Unstable??????????? Ubuntu? Slackware????????????????????
Can you be more specific?

Thanks.

-2501

lots are coming from Ubuntu over to Fedora, but i dunno about Slack as i aint used it, but it doesnt have a high usage an lacks good support Fri, 29 Feb 2008 02:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sabz) Comments RE[4]: Solaris OS somewhere? http://osnews.com/thread?302954 http://osnews.com/thread?302954 than you both for your answers.

I understand your point. Fedora seems to be very solid too if NASA is trusting it to manage very important information. I wonder if other goverment agencies is using it since it has a lot of support from system administrators and programmers.

Slackware is my favorite distro but I think that there are not a lot of Slackware fans at NASA.

Anyway, it is good for the Linux/BSD community that they are not relaying on Windows to do the most important jobs. :-)

-2501 Fri, 29 Feb 2008 02:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (2501) Comments RE: Solaris OS somewhere? http://osnews.com/thread?302955 http://osnews.com/thread?302955 Fedora is not only Fedora :-)
It's RHEL : http://www.redhat.com/rhel/
You know it, the "Red Hat, the world’s leading open source solutions provider"
It's Centos (RHEL clone) :
http://www.centos.org/
It's JBoss :
http://labs.jboss.com/
It's innovation like the new Ovirt or FreeIPA :
http://freeipa.org/
http://ovirt.org/
etc.

Fedora is about innovation. Like NASA I suppose. Fedora does not aim to be the desktop for the mass.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives
Fedora is about the rapid progress of Free, Open Source software and content. Fri, 29 Feb 2008 02:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (superman) Comments not homogenous http://osnews.com/thread?302965 http://osnews.com/thread?302965 NASA is a large agency spread across a large number of facilities across the whole country. It was a joke to mention NASA even back in the 80s when companies ran ads with lists of customers using there software.

You can be sure that somewhere at NASA someone is running just about every viable operating system currently available. Fri, 29 Feb 2008 04:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Cloudy) Comments Tux everywhere http://osnews.com/thread?302968 http://osnews.com/thread?302968 Yaaaa tux is space !!! Fri, 29 Feb 2008 05:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (linuxdude) Comments RE: Tux everywhere http://osnews.com/thread?302971 http://osnews.com/thread?302971 Linux in the Sky with Diamonds. Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (superman) Comments Ad astra per composita http://osnews.com/thread?303058 http://osnews.com/thread?303058 The article was really fun to read... I'm a space cadet... yes, of course, Sir. :-) And great pictures.

Personally, I like seeing SGI is still in the game:

This is an SGI supercomputer, 512 processors, more RAM than I can remember, running IRIX which does data analysis. Telescience provides telemetry data to Launch Control, and its all sourced from here.

Just look at the design:

http://bp2.blogger.com/_3lpqMTGV2OU/R8WadcI2KdI/AAAAAAAAACI/dQ5zG3Y...

Wow, this is what I call a real computer. =^_^=

It's also amazing to see how they filled the operations consoles from the Apollo mission with today's IT equipment. In fact, you could put a stack of servers into them, too, along with monitors and keyboards.

http://bp1.blogger.com/_3lpqMTGV2OU/R8Wc3MI2KhI/AAAAAAAAACo/Wn8JKbU...

have a look at the floor on this picture. This is how IT floors usually looked like. You can lift the panels and hide beneath the fllor, within a pile of wires. :-)

IBM still builds fine machines. Okay, they have not the appleal of the systems from the mainframe era (e. g. S/360) that the NASA had used - these computers were fun to watch -, but still impressive:

http://bp0.blogger.com/_3lpqMTGV2OU/R8Wac8I2KcI/AAAAAAAAACA/AU4NRpd...

These were my comments so far. Relapse to command monitor at NASA space cadet center "Dobry Kosmonavt". :-) Sat, 01 Mar 2008 12:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Doc Pain) Comments