Testing Xandros Linux

By Jerry Pournelle

August 2, 2004

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Sixty-Two Miles Straight Up

It was covered by nearly everyone including the BYTE team: On June 21, 2004, Mike Melvill made aerospace history by flying SpaceShipOne to an altitude of 100,124 meters. A number of people took great pictures: You can find some at www.nonmundane.org (Chaos Manor Associate Dan Spisak, proprietor), and a report and pictures at www.techrevu.com, which is Ernest Lilley's establishment.

The event itself was well covered and photographed by people like Richard Seaman (his pictures are really spectacular). There was a lot of press at the launch and at the XCOR hospitality party. Most writers noted that the ship was designed and built by Burt Rutan and paid for by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, but most didn't note the importance of small computers to the effort. We had a story here a couple of years ago on that: Not only does Rutan use small computers in his design work, but the flight simulators that made it all possible are run by a series of networked desktop PCs. I did a short report a year ago on Rutan's rollout.

The computer revolution continues to enable. There is more to freedom than the absence of restraints: You need to be able to do things before you can have the freedom to do them. Small computers have made it possible for a 63 year old pilot with no college degrees to fly into space. Take that, NASA!

Xandros Desktop OS

One often-proposed solution to the security problem is Linux. Alas, the major complaint people, very much including me, have had about both UNIX and Linux is that it takes an in-house guru to install and use it. UNIX always was the full employment act for wizards, and while Linux is supposed to be for the rest of us, it hasn't quite got there.

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