Errorplane
On the flight back from South Africa, the flight map, which normally shows a map, the altitude, air speed and distance to the destination, wouldn’t display on our little pop-up screens.
Instead of cycling through 5 pretty screens, what appeared was a Linux console full of errors from an endless script. To most of the passengers, I’m sure it was gibberish, but being Linux developers, it made sense to my co-worker and me. The in-flight entertainment computer (a small 486) was trying to download the current flight information from another computer (I’m guessing the main navigation system) and failing miserably. It was getting repeated “File not found” errors.
Linux boot screen
Even with the errors, I’m glad it was running Linux. Had it been running Windows, the message would have been the less flight-friendly: “Abort, Retry, Fail?”