Mars becomes the second planet that has more computers running Linux than Windows. https://twitter.com/mikko/status/1362763793042972673
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2021
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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This the first time we’ll be flying Linux on Mars. We’re actually running on a Linux operating system.
Funny, I've always assumed all the software powering NASA's Mars rovers was running on Linux. Turns out they're mostly running on VxWorks (from wikipedia's comparison of embedded computer systems on board the Mars rovers)
Unfortunately, I think Linux isn't that good at hard realtime applications yet, which I imagine you'd really want for a rover.
This is somewhere that I hope the seL4 microkernel would eventually take over. It's GPLv2, formally verified for security and reliability, and has a sound worst-case execution-time (WCET) analysis.
Hard realtime is not a feature to add. Instead the kernel needs to be simple enough. So the more features Linux gets, the less suitable for realtime it is.