Former NASA/JPL employee. I can say with gusto that Linux was never really supported by overhead. Projects pay directly for cloud services, servers, computer ti

Former NASA/JPL employee. I can say with gusto that Linux was never really supported by overhead. Projects pay directly for cloud services, servers, computer time, equipment for field testing, etc. Those are where rocky Linux would be used. At least in my experience, the usual burden funds are used for vanilla windows desktops or laptops for employees, which works fine for 90% of the org. The rest write proposals to get non standard equipment in one form or another. This drastically reduces overhead costs and allows results driven grants to buy only necessary equipment. Same as any other gov funded research-related capital purchase. At least in theory.