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.
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.
When we rolled into Baghdad, we did it using open source. - Major General Nicholas Justice
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)?
Greek military uses Linux Mint, so yeah, it’s used in some places. I believe the Indian one does too.
We used it as OS for the tank and airplane simulators, just because it made them cheaper compared to buying 500 Windows licenses
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 haven’t done any work for the military but i can say that all the legacy systems I’ve worked on were because the specific software they need was written only for Windows 98 and the developer or company that created it is long gone. Keeping it going is a chore but switching to literally anything else is out of the question.
I could see for military applications that having the known quantity of a working piece of software that isn’t changing anymore and can be swapped as an entire unit is an advantage, especially if it doesn’t touch the internet in any capacity. But eventually you run out of people who know what to do if any changes need to be made.
Well I know my local army base (US) was looking for Linux sys admins, so I figure they have some servers on base.
Most of that information is actually publicly available.
Stuff like this https://www.usaspending.gov/search/?hash=624182a957cfea14bc90717fb91ec1f8
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.
Linux distro NixOS is used by mil-tech company Anduril
Turkish military uses Pardus, a Turkish Linux distro, but I’m not sure to what extent.
I saw a youtuber once reviewing the distro that the Russian military uses. It had some crusty retro desktop environment iirc.
Tvwm ought to be good enough for anyone!
I’m not so worried about stormtroopers using linux as much as guns, bombs, prisons, cops, torture, genocide, nukes, etc.
A picture is worth a thousand words,
