Groklaw: “Is It True the DoD Loves Linux?”

“The US Army loves embedded Linux. The ‘soldier of the future’
and battlefield communications will all be created on top of Linux.
Embedded solutions can be found in a variety of vehicles for
situational awareness and ‘blue force tracking’ (good guys). You
need low power chips in such an envirorment, so processors like ARM
are very popular. With Linux you have the code, it’s secure, it
ports very easily to a variety of platforms, and development costs
are very, very low. Embedded Linux is a favorite for many
communications systems.

“The Intelligence Community loves Linux as well. I’m sure you’ve
seen the stories about Secure Linux from the NSA (which was just
added to the 2.6 kernel). Just like in the real world, you find it
in the back room on the Power User’s workstation and on the
servers. If you compare the price of Secure Linux on Intel
multiprocessor workstations verses Trusted Solaris on Sun HW, you
save a boatload of money.

“I used Linux on a USAF project during the Kosovo conflict. We
pulled the prototype out of my lab and wired a variety of locations
throughout Italy with Samba data servers and Perl coded robots that
surfed for data and cataloged it directly into MySQL databases. The
databases were accessible via apache and PHP. We were credited with
helping to save the life of a downed pilot because all the critical
information was immediately available to commanders and the Special
Ops team in their helicopters doing the extraction…”

Complete
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