The DDG-1000 Has a Red Hat

I am probably the only person who didn't know the DDG-1000 is going to use Red Hat, but then again, I've been using SUSE since Novell bought them. Actually, the only Linux I find myself using these days is VMWare, but that's another story. This article caught my attention though.

"Bringing realtime capabilities to mainstream Linux has been a joint effort of the IBM Linux Technology Center, Red Hat and the Linux community," said Keith Bright, program director Linux Technology Center, IBM Corp. "The realtime Linux solution was first developed in response to a request of IBM by Raytheon and the United States Navy for the DDG 1000 Zumwalt Class Destroyer project on IBM Blade Center technology. The resulting technology is a fine example of combining commercial opportunities and open source technology and the open source community. It is the participation of companies like Red Hat and IBM along with open source community assistance and acceptance, that adds value for everyone in the marketplace. Building a solution in this manner (though special at first) provides for a better supported solution and makes it available to everyone. It has been a great collaboration effort."

I've never really thought about it, but does anyone know why the Navy wouldn't use its own compiled version of Linux? Seems to me a simi-proprietary version "USN Linux" would be a smarter idea than a public distribution, you know, just in case. Considering how picky those IBM blades are, which I know from personal experience, I'm betting manufacturers install. I hope I'm wrong though, seems to me the Navy should be IT savvy enough not to use a manufacturers install package for a system like the DDG-1000, but then again, I would have figured the Navy compiled its own version of Linux.

Anyway, reminded me of this video by Raytheon. I hope the Navy only builds two DDG-1000s, honestly, because the Navy needs big technology demonstrators and uh, also can spend the remaining money smarter. However, there is no denying it, these ships are going to be amazing tools of war.