Linux in daily life

Linux

When we talk about GNU / Linux (which for convenience we refer to only as Linux) to neophytes or other computer scientists with little or no knowledge about this operating system; many times they are left with a confused, incredulous or mocking face; one of his strongest arguments is «Linux is not used by anyone, only a handful of amateurs, its usefulness in the real world is nil»

In this article I am going to show you how «Linux runs the world"And is stuck in the least suspected places from our homes to the" spearhead "places of humanity's advancement.

Let's start with the biggest sites.

NASA

Space Shuttle

NASA is one of the recognized sites where some Linux "flavor" is used. From their daily use equipment for some of their administrative staff to the International Spaceship Station (ISS); where it made headlines in mid-2013 because fully migrated from the well-known Windows to Linux; in those days Debian 6 as they required a stable and reliable system; Much of the ISS infrastructure was already working thanks to Red Hat.

This migration was done on the onboard crew systems that previously ran the Redmond operating system.

Other space agencies such as the European, China, India and others also opt for Linux for their critical operations, its use is widespread in the aerospace field.

Space X

Falcon Heavy SpaceX

The flagship private aerospace exploration company uses Linux and they have made headlines for it, such as their launch of a Hewlett Packard super computer where they carried Linux and as we can see in this article their computers run on Linux under the same pretext given by NASA, a robust, reliable and customizable system, as do many of the internal systems of its Falcon rockets.

SpaceX has this repository on Github where there is free code developed by them to give "soul" to their powerful Falcons, you should take a look if you are interested, maybe you can start your own rocket project in your yard.

Elon Musk The head behind this company and others such as TESLA or Solar City seems to have a great appreciation for Linux since it is common to find in their products and equipment used by their company the good Tux as an operating system for their operations.

Super computers

Tianhe-2

Many are unaware of the existence of these computers that occupy entire buildings and are used for scientific purposes, they are made up of thousands of processors, millions of cores with a architecture different from the known X86 and AMD64 and Petabytes of Ram and Hard Drive, yes, you read that right. Petabytes. 100% of these computers, which can only be financed by governments or universities due to their complexity and consumption, are managed by Linux or some variant of Unix.

In the case of the computer in the image, the Chinese Sunway Taihulight with a total of 40.960 processors, 10.649.600 RISC architecture cores, 1.3 Petabytes of RAM and a performance of 93 petaflops.

Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

LHC-CERN

Geneva's Large Hadron Collider is managed by a custom Red Hat-based Linux distribution called Scientific Linux, the large collider measures several kilometers to the point that it is located in two countries at the same time, France and Switzerland; Because it crosses borders, some of its main functions are to investigate dark matter, recreate the conditions that gave rise to our universe and investigate whether, according to string theory, there are alternate dimensions to ours, among other high-level scientific processes. complexity to understand our universe.

It is also important to note that so far it is the Most complex man-made machine made yet, so it is a source of pride that such a huge machine is managed by our preferred operating system since it has been the only one capable of dealing with all its systems and data. As an extra tip I have to mention that this was where the existence of the previously elusive and hypothetical Higgs Boson was confirmed, also called «God particle«.

Now let's see how Linux is in our daily life and we don't even suspect it.

Automovile industry

Tesla with Linux on the computer

Cars today have an on-board computer not only so that the user can manage the car's peripherals, they also manage internal and vital functions of the car itself and how could it be otherwise, Linux is there taking care of its usersThis is not only seen in civilian cars, but also in sports cars of the stature of F1 as we can see. here, so you're probably driving a Linux-managed car.

We can also observe the existence of the Linux system in cars like the Chevrolet Spark in its «Spark Android» version thanks to Android Auto, Tesla where the interface of its dashboard developed under the QT library stands out, as well as the source code used for its cars licensed under the GPL license of the Free Software Foundation It is according to its clauses, available for free for those who like to take a look, improve it and why not, do experiments with it in their own car

Internet and telecommunications

internet-security-browser-logos

did not you know? The vast majority of the internet is supported by LinuxEven Microsoft itself has agreed to use Linux for its servers, the servers that provide access to websites, the routers in your home, the access points in your office, the firewall of your company, the hosting where you have saved all those photos of kittens , Facebook, Amazon, Google and many more greats work internally with LinuxSo even if you don't use Linux on your desktop computer, just by doing a Google search or uploading something to the cloud you are already using Linux indirectly.

The vast majority of large Internet companies contribute human talent and money to the development of Linux as we can see in this link of the Linux Foundation. Even Microsoft where they are already known for their slogan "Microsoft loves Linux" Will we ever see Office ported for our system? Maybe a Linux based Windows?

Cellphones

The Android-x86 operating system now allows running the latest version of Android, Android 6.0 version

If you use Android you use Linux, it's that simple, Google's mobile system is based on Linux, you can check this by checking the kernel version of your android device.

Linux has precisely prevented a total monopoly from being made in the mobile sector due to its freedom thanks to the fact that systems of all kinds have been created, from a distribution of Kali Linux, the distribution par excellence for pentesting tests based on the ARM architecture of mobiles, Plasma Mobile from the makers of KDE and Ubuntu Touch from Cannonical creators of well known Ubuntu.

Multimedia and entertainment devices

Alienware Steam Machine (Dell)

If you have a smart tv, a console of this generation or of the past, you are probably using Linux or something similar, WebOS the operating system of many smart TVs is based on Linux, as well as consoles like Play Station 3, Play Station 4 or Nintendo Switch which do not use linux exactly but use a unix system which is a cousin of linux, a BSD system; so internally and command level it is managed the same, inclusive, Play Station 3 has been modified running a Linux with all the letters.

Valve has bet big on Linux, has given us proton, a customization of the execution layer of Win programs, Wine which allows running windows programs in Linux, steamOS its own Linux distro to play, we are seeing that the future of video games are unix systems like Linux like the great favorite due to its community that strives every day to improve it and give better support.

Home automation and IoT

House connected to devices

Do you have a virtual assistant at home? A chrome cast? Maybe a smart fridge? the vast majority of "smart" devices in our home run under Linux; until literally a toasterThis has been greatly enhanced by the DIY community and free and open source hardware such as Arduino and Raspberry among others.

Many people have assembled their own virtual assistants, light control systems, surveillance systems, robots for housework and others thanks to Linux and Free Hardware, you could try to do the same, it is not that complex, it just requires some patience.

That's it for now, there are many other places where Linux is in the shadows, but there are so many that the article would be much longer than it already is.

Now you know how Linux is present in daily life from our smart fridge, through our car to the International Spaceship Station.


5 comments, leave yours

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  1.   Nasher_87 (ARG) said

    What's more, the Tesla thing is Gentoo

  2.   Jose Albert (Linux Post Install) said

    Excellent article… Success and prosperity as a Writer of this excellent Blog.

  3.   Juanlinux said

    I've been using linux since 2005, I hardly use windows, I use opensuse, since version 10, before I used suse 9,

  4.   Juanlinux said

    Most of the servers are linux, when the wanacry problem came up on the telephone, people could continue to use the telephone internet because the servers I imagine would be linux even though the telephone workers use windows, so there were no problems with the clients.

  5.   Swamp said

    So many things that GNU / Linux does and I have not been able to install Fortnite on my Ubuntu, the day the games turn to GNU / Linux, that day Window $ disappears.