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
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.
as they’re robust
I would argue they are just what was used during development. After that, it never changes.
Why did they use it back then? Were there many alternatives? I do not know.
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.
Greek military uses Linux Mint, so yeah, it’s used in some places. I believe the Indian one does too.
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)?
Running a full OS on a rocket? Why? It’s mostly some embedded stuff, some kind of arduino.
The launching platform though… maybe a minimalist OS with a curses interface.
That’s a real brain fuck. Now I need to go research this.
Well I know my local army base (US) was looking for Linux sys admins, so I figure they have some servers on base.
Linux distro NixOS is used by mil-tech company Anduril
Most of that information is actually publicly available.
Stuff like this https://www.usaspending.gov/search/?hash=624182a957cfea14bc90717fb91ec1f8
Check out the World of Tanks forums for information.
Turkish military uses Pardus, a Turkish Linux distro, but I’m not sure to what extent.
Didn’t they at one point use a bank of PS3s when they still allowed for Linux boot options?
I’m not sure about the military, but yes a number of researchers used PS3s for cheap computing power.
A picture is worth a thousand words,
