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Mars becomes the 2nd planet that has more computers running Linux than Windows
- fasteddie31003 6y agoThey run Wind River distributions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_River_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_River_Systems
- temp8964 6y agoIt sounds like there are Windows computers on Mars?
- phoe-krk 6y agoNot necessarily. Any positive integer is greater than zero.
- fireball_blaze 6y agoWhere did you get that impression?
- jimmaswell 6y agoThere were presumably computers there before on the other rovers. They either had Windows or a third OS or no OS according to the title.
- lights0123 6y agoVxWorks, specifically.
- yellowapple 6y agoSome cyclic executives and such, too.
- jandrese 6y agoGiven the relatively slow CPUs and limited memory on those older rovers I would expect an embedded OS before Windows. Think QNX or VxWorks, not Windows NT.
- shmerl 6y agoNo one wants to be in situation like this (: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP31lluUDWU&t=30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP31lluUDWU&t=30
- peter303 6y agoPerhaps when Russian or Chinese probes successfully land. They are both notorious for "borrowing" US software.
- fireball_blaze 6y agoThe flight software and embedded systems framework for the Ingenuity helicopter is called F' (pronounced F Prime) and is open source. Find it here: https://github.com/nasa/fprime https://github.com/nasa/fprime
- marianov 6y agoPrime as in Optimus lineage? Rover! Transform and roll out!
- jbm 6y agoTangentially related, but Optimus Prime has a drone - Roller. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Roller_(G1) https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Roller_(G1)
- jaywalk 6y agoThat's the framework, but is the actual flight software open source? I highly doubt it.
- londons_explore 6y agoI don't see why it wouldn't be... It's not like NASA is worried someone else is going to steal their software and send their own rover to mars using it...
- drewzero1 6y agoMore likely, they may be worried someone is going to find a vulnerability and take control of their multi-jillion-dollar piece of equipment. At least in this case physical access is an extremely improbable attack vector...
- mod 6y agoThat occurred to me as well, but I imagine this is separated from the communications. Maybe it's not controlled at all... it does say autonomous, after all.
- cosmotic 6y agoIt's almost as if, without a human using it, the GUI is no longer a primary design goal.
- Kuinox 6y agoThis statement imply that you cant run a Windows without a GUI which is false. Windows can run fine with 256MB RAM with no display support.
- spijdar 6y agoThe point is that Windows' biggest advantage is its familiar GUI. The trouble with Linux on the desktop (and in most small business environments where the sysadmins only know how to drive windows server with a full gui installed) is the Linux GUI can kinda suck, and way more people are familiar with the Windows GUI. Take away the GUI, and Linux becomes a pretty easy choice.
- Kuinox 6y agoWindows biggest advantage is it's UX which the GUI is a part of. "Take away the GUI, and Linux becomes a pretty easy choice. " An external machine can become the GUI. It's not because your machine can't render that it can't have an external GUI. VSCode SSH is popular because it's able to bring a decent GUI to any linux server.
- JCharante 6y agoThe GUI bit is interesting because my experience is that non technical people can't even navigate windows without extra instruction. My teenage job was to train hotel / resort call center agents on using oracle tools and even a CLI tool (if you've ever made a Marriott booking over the phone) then the person on the other end has a terminal open and is entirely using keyboard navigation. Although different workplaces probably give their staff more autonomy which requires their staff to have prerequisite knowledge.
- orev 6y agoThat’s the party line, however Windows with no GUI is extremely awkward to use, and most people just end up using RSAT to interact with it, which is just running the GUI remotely.
- ravenstine 6y agoI wonder why they used Linux? I'm not that familiar with engineering at NASA or JPL, but I thought computers used in exploration were running real-time operating systems. Is Linux capable of this?
- janderland 6y agoWhen I worked on military autonomous vehicles (which I’d expect to be similar to these) we always had at least two system on board: 1) A real-time flight controller, 2) One or more Linux computers, networked via an on-board LAN which performed all the other tasks.
- senden9 6y agoI worked with some people of that particular JPL software team to setup a similar setup like the Mars helicopter for a earth UAV. Can confirm that multiple real time systems are used. They are controlled by a non real time Linux system.
- kashyapc 6y agoReal-time Linux is a thing, although it was maintained separately, outside mainline Linux, for a long time. About 4-ish years ago, the project got some decent funding and is now part of Linux Foundation: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/blog/real-time-linux-continues-its-way-to-mainline-development-and-beyond/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/blog/real-time-linux-cont...
- redis_mlc 6y agoThe description "real-time" varies in meaning depending on the application and acceptable average and maximum latency. The un-informed usually thinks "real-time" means "hard real-time", but that's seldom necessary, so one can save on additional expense and effort by using a regular linux distro and removing most of the daemons and file location indexing. I've done real-time development (for Space Shuttle, rocket and balloon projects), and largely all I care about is if a circular buffer can be emptied in time before it fills. That's one technique for avoiding latency variation issues. The versions of linux that you would normally encounter aim for music real-time, which is about 10 ms latency. 30 ms is considered to be bad. Most of the pro Yamaha synths use linux as the embedded OS, and some of the code is downloadable (they attempt to comply with the letter of the GPL.) So you can go down to Guitar Center and do a real-time test anytime yourself. :) The iPhone is pretty good for music, because it was designed to have low latency when playing. https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2018/02/17/10-years-later-android-audio-quality-still-lags/ https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2018/02/17/10-years-later... https://superpowered.com/androidaudiopathlatency https://superpowered.com/androidaudiopathlatency Looks like Wind River discontinued RTLinux, which was hard real-time (a real shame actually, as it removes one of the few hard real-time options): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTLinux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTLinux
- nashashmi 6y agoMicrosoft is the master of wait and see approach. There not great at being first. But they are great at competing.
- mitjak 6y agoInternet Explorer on mars gogogo
- majkinetor 6y agoPowerShell for Solar system automation gogogo
- underseacables 6y agoProbably because it’s cheaper and less prone to malicious interference.
- xyst 6y agoHow do they issue updates to the system on mars?
- vesinisa 6y agoWith data uplink? Same way as your mobile phone gets system updates (OTA).
- xyst 6y agoWonder what the speeds and delay/latency is like? Did they achieve near theoretical limits of light between earth and mars, or was it a different transport layer? Would love to one day communicate with a person on another planet. Maybe this is something 3 or 4 generations from now will be able to do.
- jandrese 6y agoIt's radio waves. I'm not sure what other transport layers you are expecting to use between Earth and Mars. The latency is measured in minutes. Obviously something like TCP won't work. Typically they would use something like DTN. https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/engineering/technology/disruption_tolerant_networking https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/engineering/techn... Edit: Corrected hours to minutes. Brainfart on my part.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vesinisa 6y agoThe bandwidth is pretty good, considering those super high res photos they send back. There's space in between, and Mars has a very thin atmosphere, so you can communicate with radio quite well I'd bet. Latency is indeed a major issue, it's about 11.5 minutes per direction. The newest rover actually has some A.I. for that reason to let it drive autonomously and not always have to wait for next commands from Earth.
- tibbydudeza 6y agoThey still using VxWorks for the lander and rover ???.
- young_unixer 6y agoThe GPL will soon infect the whole galaxy.
- majkinetor 6y agoBig surprise waiting for aliens that plan to steal the tech and modify it for its own purposes... without publishing their changes on Earth :)
- repsilat 6y ago> There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the source code has been on display at your local galactic version control system in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years...
- gostsamo 6y agoYes, in a maze, with broken bulb, stolen staircase, and put in a cupboard with a sign "danger! jaguar inside".
- mkl 6y agoNot really, but I know which bit you mean: "It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of The Leopard“"
- gostsamo 6y agoOkay, I admit reading it in another language many years ago.
- emptyparadise 6y agoHonestly, that's relatively mild compared to some other "begrudgingly releasing our GPL code" implementations.
- usb0 6y ago
- majkinetor 6y agoIts also 2nd planet that has more machines then people :)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- olex 6y agoThe only planet completely populated by robots.
- duxup 6y agoThat we know of.
- FnControlOption 6y agoThis makes me imagine some secret alien civilization living in the depths of Venus, using its atmosphere as cover
- godelski 6y agoVenus is completely populated by dead robots
- dylan604 6y agoIs it though? Are the robots even recognizable as robots, or have they totally melted into slag?
- majkinetor 6y agoExactly. The other machine adventures are not even on planets :)
- godelski 6y agoIs a robot that becomes a melted slag of metal not a dead robot?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoThat's because it was a helicopter and NASA didn't want it to crash.
- IshKebab 6y agoQuite a stale joke. I can't remember the last time Windows crashed. Windows is probably more stable than Linux at this point, at least from a kernel panic point of view. They do a load of static analysis of drivers and can even reload GPU drivers if they crash without taking down the whole system. That's decades ahead of Linux.
- jacquesm 6y agoI can't remember either because I'm trying very hard not to have to use windows.
- trynton 6y ago> .. I can't remember the last time Windows crashed .. Short-term memory loss ;]
- Nailgun 6y agoI agree, I can't remember the last time windows crashed. My home PC is a 2014 low-budget build and I don't recall any blue screens of death or freezes. I often wonder if people run Windows on a potato to account for all the crashes people seem to have.
- bluGill 6y agoAnything NT based was a few orders of magnitude better than the old Win 95 systems that gave windows a reputation for crashing. That is what happens when you put some effort into good design. Things have gotten better because Microsoft has learned. Then again, everyone else has gotten better now.
- Kuinox 6y agoSadly people are still buying crappy motherboard/laptop that have crappy drivers and blame it on Windows. MSI ethernet drivers sometimes trigger a memory leak that eat up all the RAM in a few seconds. Dell thunderbolt docks are buggy and trigger a BSOD.
- rsj_hn 6y agoThis sounds like an old slashdot headline
- xtracto 6y agoFrom the open-source-alien-robot-overlords department.
- xenophonf 6y agoFollowing reports of a new alien war machine in the ancient Fal'leesh river delta, K'breel, speaker for the Council, stressed that again, there was no cause for alarm: "This is the last, futile gesture of the disease-ridden apes that foul the sinister blue planet third from our star. We will persevere, no matter the risks, no matter the costs. Our gelsacs swell with pride at the thought of the Enemy's inevitable self-immolation augered by their fitful attempts to travel among the stars." When Junior Reporter #AXI-1138 of the Celestial News Network attempted to ask the Speaker whether there was any truth to reports of the machine's successful landing, activation, and telemetry transmissions, K'breel called it fake news and ritualistically crushed the reporter's gelsacs with the lectern's Bhan'ammer.
- sand500 6y agoThe helicopter has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801. That is probably more powerful than the Perseverance's cpu" 200 MHz BAE RAD750. I wonder if they could offload compute tasks to the helicopter.
- ssijak 6y agoIt is more powerful. But it has to fly in real time on its own. Rover is on the ground and can do things more slowly without penalty.
- fudged71 6y agoThey will not. The helicopter is a side project that gets abandoned after 30 days regardless of outcomes, the rover drives away (presumably out of range)
- sand500 6y ago> gets abandoned after 30 days regardless of outcomes Thats surprising since it is a huge pain to get to Mars. I wonder if it can keep up with the rover if it does one or two flights a day?
- fudged71 6y agoThey are planning 3-5 flights max in the 30 days. It’s a technology demonstration. Essentially a throwaway experiment. All they care to prove is whether they can fly on mars. Any extra value they get out of it is a bonus
- gwoplock 6y agoAlright, I'm going to be that guy. What's the other planet with more Linux than Windows?
- agloeregrets 6y agoEarth, with a broad definition of 'computer' you land on cellphones too, Android (or even Tizen) is used on like 90% of all new phones sold today worldwide. Edit: To be clear, I was noting the simple fact that many probably don't at first think of an Android cellphone as a computer.
- davidw 6y agoMobile phones are way more capable computers in every way but the keyboard than the Commodore 64 I got my start with.
- calciphus 6y agoMost phones built in the last decade the majority can accept a Bluetooth or USB keyboard. If you were so inclined, I suspect the exact keyboard from your Commodore 64 could be connected to the phone of your choice with nothing more than off the shelf adapters.
- belltaco 6y agoSuddenly Android isn't Linux anymore when it comes to discussing malware prevalence on Windows vs on Linux.
- kpommerenke 6y agoI had to look this up: Android is based on the Linux kernel.
- kragen 6y agoIt's not a particularly broad definition of "computer". 32-bit and 64-bit cellphones are made of synchronous VLSI ICs running at gigahertz clock speeds including a few gigabytes of byte-oriented DRAM and superscalar multi-core ARM CPUs with single-user GUIs displayed on an LCD running Linux and software written in C, Java, and JS, plus a GPU running OpenGL, storing their data on Flash, running on a few watts of power and globally networked over Wi-Fi and TCP/IP. They have peripherals connected over USB and the SD card bus, and also CSI. This 64-bit laptop is made of synchronous VLSI ICs at gigahertz clock speeds including a few gigabytes of byte-oriented DRAM and a superscalar multi-core amd64 CPU with a single-user GUI displayed on an LCD running Linux and software written in C, Java, and JS, plus a GPU running OpenGL, storing its data on Flash and spinning rust, running on a few watts of power and globally networked over Wi-Fi and TCP/IP. It has peripherals connected over USB and the SD card bus, and also SATA. These are pretty much exactly the same. The definition of "computer" already has to be a lot broader than that to include both the 24-bit SDS 940 with 192 kibibytes of magnetic cores and 96 megabytes of spinning rust, running an instruction every 5 μs or so, with no GPU and analog video output hardware made out of vacuum tubes and TV cameras, on top of the Berkeley Timesharing System and serving six simultaneous users, on which Engelbart demonstrated The Mother of All Demos in 1968, and this laptop. It is transparently absurd to suggest that "computer" should include both this laptop and the SDS 940 and its predecessors like the IBM 1401 (vacuum tubes, no transistors, decimal memory, punch card I/O, no operating system, no multitasking, variable-length instruction operands, millions of times slower and less memory), but not cellphones. Compared to the differences between the 1401 and my laptop, the differences between my laptop and the cellphone are totally insignificant. It is true that the vulgar and ignorant often do not understand that their cellphones are computers. This allows them to be more easily taken advantage of by companies that want to reduce them to consumers instead of participants in creating culture. Instead of aping their errors, we should work to help them understand the true nature of things, because ignorance is not a sin—it's a punishment. Because sunlight is the best disinfectant.
- blackrock 6y agoI bet the Linux desktop GUI still sucks. We need a new model.
- valuearb 6y agoIronically Mr Mars himself, Elon Musk, tried to get PayPal to standardize on Windows NT.
- KindOne 6y agoContext: https://www.allencheng.com/the-paypal-wars-summary-pdf/ https://www.allencheng.com/the-paypal-wars-summary-pdf/
- wmf 6y agoOver 20 years ago. Now SpaceX and Tesla run on Linux.
- valuearb 6y agoOnly because the Elders of Mars telepathically contacted Elon to tell him that colonists using accursed Windows would find little purchase on the windy plains of Vastitas Borealis, and their little colonies would end in the blue screen of death.
- musicale 6y agoMost computers on the Earth run Android (Linux kernel != Linux distro) or iOS.
- nabla9 6y agoahem. Linux kernel = Linux. Linux distro = GNU/Linux
- webstrand 6y agoAlpine, for instance is a Linux distro, but is not GNU/Linux.
- bladewolf47 6y agoI'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
- nabla9 6y agoFirst we take Mars, then we take Desktop.
- amelius 6y agoBut I'm curious, how many Intel, AMD, Nvidia, or Apple chips?
- ognarb 6y agoAlso it is partially powered by KDE4 :) https://twitter.com/ivan_cukic/status/1362722727560425476 https://twitter.com/ivan_cukic/status/1362722727560425476
- dfilppi 6y agoThat we know of
- gerash 6y agoWhat a pointless observation
- randomsearch 6y agoat first it made me laugh, then it made me react like you, then I thought - actually, why is that? And it's really an incredible testament to the success of Linux. Started by a student, built originally by volunteers contributing their time. I feel like (for all its flaws) Linux is one of mankind's great achievements and its deployment on another planet underlines its success.
- soheil 6y agoCan the rover mine some bitcoin and send it back to earth? Would mars bitcoin be worth more than earth bitcoin? Since it's from mars will it not have more sentimental value?
- tmalsburg2 6y agoThe rover actually can't mine bitcoin because by the time it manages to create a block and sends it back to Earth, the block chain has already moved on and the block is obsolete. I guess this means that Bitcoin is never going to be an interplanetary currency. Paper money is perhaps not so bad after all.
- soheil 6y agoOk maybe not BTC but can it mine something with a lower level of difficulty?
- Robotbeat 6y agoWhat it needs is a cryptocurrency with LONGER time between blocks. Say an hour instead of 10 minutes. Dogecoin uses 1 minute block times, if I recall correctly. The light time to Mars round trip is something like 10 to 45 minutes depending on what part of the 26 month Earth-Mars synodic cycle you’re at.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- soheil 6y agoWas that not already the case with prior missions to mars? Surely no one has ever sent a rover to mars with Windows running on it.
- codeulike 6y agoThey sent one but it crashed because mission control were still only halfway through reading the EULA when it reached Mars after 8 months of flight.
- nom 6y agoHere [0] is the paper describing the hardware of Ingenuity in more detail Things that stand out to me: It uses mostly off-the-shelf electronic components that are only automotive/industrial grade! - 2.26 GHz Quad-core Snapdragon 801 - Texas Instruments TMS570LC43x (2x for tolerance) - Sony 18650 LiIon batteries - Zig-Bee to communicate with the rover The only part that is somewhat special is the radiation tolerant FPGA ProASIC3 that ties everything together and takes care of power cycling other components when they lock up. Too bad that they probably will only fly it a few times as the rover has to move on and it's just a tech demo. I so wish it will follow Perseverance on her mission, that would be so awesome to see. It's certainly capable of doing that! 0: https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2014/46229/CL%2317-6243.pdf https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2014/46229/CL%2317...
- Skunkleton 6y agoConsidering that Perseverance is running your standard rad hardened PPC from the late 90's, I think that speaks a bit to the expected lifespan and importance of Ingenuity. If the POC goes well, I expect we will see hardened components in the next revision. Then again, if Ingenuity is doing anything too modern, I doubt a PPC 750 will be able to keep up.
- HeadsUpHigh 6y agoHow are they doing machine learning with PPC from the late 90s?
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoWith https://github.com/torch/torch7 https://github.com/torch/torch7 on https://luajit.org/luajit.html https://luajit.org/luajit.html maybe?
- foobarbecue 6y agoIt doesn't do machine learning. It does stereo reconstruction, hazard analysis, map generation, and path planning using stuff like D* and Gestalt.
- ngngngng 6y agoI can't help but imagine the rover crash landing on Mars due to a forced windows system update that wasn't able to be delayed.
- andred14 6y agoCan't even read this as I was banned from Twitter for doing nothing but sharing truth and facts. This should alarm you and motivate you to ditch Twitter for other alternatives.
- maffyoo 6y agoWoo.. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the 90's is asking for its platform wars back
- soheil 6y agoSo if the helicopter crashes or otherwise dies after its 30 days lifespan are we back to a single planet that has more computers running Linux than Windows?
- 29athrowaway 6y agoWindows should be banned on Mars. That would be a good fresh start.
- ineedasername 6y agoThis is more humorous than any sort of meaningful metric. A bit like bringing a Ford F-150 into the Alaskan wilds and saying "Ford has 100% market penetration in all directions for 1,000 miles!"
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago:) Also, Mars has gone completely solar and nuclear. No petrochemicals at all!
- ibayern 6y agoLinux to the Mars before Doge to the moon!
- rationalfaith 6y agoJeez, the desperation is real from this post Even Mars isn't exempt from human ego and division.
- rurban 6y agoVxWorks still beats it. Linux is not that dominant in space. There is even more dSpace/RTLinux than linux. And windows only for toys.
- wellthisisgreat 6y agoAll responses here are just so uplifting. I click on the news about space on HN just to get a feel-good boost from people’s comments
- pjmlp 6y agoSo no excuse for not being the Year of Desktop Linux on Mars.
- cybert00th 6y ago"Lizard Gates is sad" - never a true word said in jest. Yep, somethings you just can't have Billy-boy.
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