Penguin-powered
How far can you go with open-source software? Quite a ways, apparently:
Beyond the 20 years it took to build and half of all the world’s astrophysicists, it also takes another key ingredient to make [the Large Hadron Collider] work — Linux.
CERN which is the organization that runs the LHC project is using something called CernVM which is is custom Linux distribution. According to VMware, CernVM runs inside of VMware virtual machines that include PC and Macs across a grid that encompases the power of approximately 40,000 CPUs and some 15 petabytes of data a year.
CERN itself is no stranger to Linux and is one of the lead backers of the Scientific Linux distribution, which is a recompiled version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Thank heaven. If they’d tried to run this on Windows the world would have been destroyed by now — which, so far as I can tell, it hasn’t.
(Seen at CrunchGear.)
fillyjonk »
12 September 2008 · 7:14 am
That would bring new meaning to the term, “Blue Screen of Death.”
McGehee »
12 September 2008 · 8:54 am
I dunno about that last link of yours, Charles. Everybody knows you can’t believe everything you read on the internet.
John Owen Butler »
12 September 2008 · 10:51 am
sudo apt-get install blackholemaker0.1.1rc
fillyjonk »
12 September 2008 · 12:52 pm
Actually, that last link was last modified on Sept. 9, so maybe we’re not so safe after all.