THE most STABLE OS in the World?

[Nokia]

LOL, yeah courtesy of Bill!

[gore]

Originally posted here by MS_Security
in the very unlikely event that a general purpose operating system separated me from death i suppose i would want qnx neutrino. ideally i could have someone like lockheed-martin or boeing develop an operating system specifically for whatever life enabling role much like the operating systems they use for their airplanes and air traffic control systems.

eros or coyotos might be good also but i think i would stay away from research projects.

at any rate i would completely avoid monolithic operating systems because i would hate for solar flares or cosmic rays or god knows to cause corruption on the system that results in a driver crash.

It's like catch came back for a visit lol. Are you by chance related to him or him?

Nokia your box doesn't have to be oblong

[sec_ware]

Hi

I think that MS_Security made a very valid point.

All OS wars aside, if YOUR LIFE depended on a computer running an OS, what OS would YOU want it running?

If the asset to protect is a human life, money is
a vague issue. I ask myself: where I am confronted
with systems which have to be designed to protect
my life. Three examples: traffic lights, elevators and
airplanes.

None of these run on a windows or *nix-kernel, I
guess, except maybe on products of a few small niche
players. Anyway, there was once a rumor about Schindler
elevators running on a Windows 98 kernel ...


Boeing, as well as Airbus use INTEGRITY-178B[1], which
is designed to reach a high assurance level (EAL 6+).
I am not an expert, but experts say that it is
impossible to evaluate such a high level if more than
a few thousand lines of code are involved. Certainly,
there must be some design element in INTEGRITY-178B
(e.g. secure partitions). Since I am a frequent flyer,
I seem to trust this OS

In Schindler elevators the control system is Miconic.
Other than in airplanes, where the weight (and thus a
hydraulic redundance system) is a factor, elevators
can implement at "no cost" an hydraulic failsafe system,
thus, the assurance of the control system is not that
relevant (a high-assurance watchdog seems sufficient).
As a comparison, the Boeing 777 still has a few hydraulic
backup subsystems, while the Airbus products are plain
fly-by-wire (if I recall correctly).


I would not trust my life to any Windows or *nix-based
system. However, I feel that is is possible to strip-down
an open-source *nix-based system such that it will run
on one particular set of hardware with a well-defined
functionality ...but, can this still be called a "*nix-based
system"?


Cheers


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178B (and references therein)

[RoadClosed]

I was going to mention airline OS systems and software considering I was listening to a speaker last week talk about an unintentional hack at boeing and them having to spend 70k to inspect the code, even though the hacker never touched it, he used their system to hack some court records. Completely closed and simplified. One of the most stable and simplified OS I know of is the flight computers on board the space shuttles. The older ones especially. The didn't even use magnetic memory. It was an etched metallalic drum.

[Lv4]

chaOS

My friend wrote that a few years back and the boxes that it has been running on have never crashed (once development/testing stages were over).

For readily available, or previously readily available, OS I would go with something like OS/2 Warp... USPS still has some of them running and they have been running for years (6+) with no down time. Perhaps VMS, or AIX. Sinux is also a choice.

Nothing that MS makes though.

[RoadClosed]

I have an OS/2 box that works fine. As long as you never turn the modem it needs off. It can't figure out it's there without a reboot.

[SirDice]

One OS I've always loved and still use every now and then for ol' time sake... AmigaOS... Small footprint and rock solid..

32 bit pre-emptive multitasking when PCs were still at the 16bit cooperative multitasking windows 3.x.. 20 years later and it's still actively being developed.. AmigaOS 4.0 was released not too long ago Unfortunately none of my Amigas can run it Does anybody want to give me a PPC board for a 1200 or 4000?

[cacosapo]

What OS do YOU trust your life on? Any OS at all

So what's the most stable OS on Earth?

Talking about General Purpose Operating Systems (not medical, air plane, rocket control, etc), i still believe in Big Blue : Z/OS 1.4 running on a Z/Series Mainframe

http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserve...t/mission.html

[RoadClosed]

AmigaOS 4.0 was released not too long ago Unfortunately none of my Amigas can run it Does anybody want to give me a PPC board for a 1200 or 4000?

HAD NO IDEA the Amiga was still in dev. Sweet. The Amiga blew the **** out of any PC back then. So why did it die? Lack of open connectivity etc. Like Apple. It was a tough switch when i bought my first VGA capable PC clone.

[gore]

I found something today that I'm adding here. Why? Well read it and find out:


http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6246/1/

Seems Linux IS in fact used on heart machines where someone's life IS at stake.

ZING.