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Which operating systems run the In-Flight Entertainment Systems on commercial passenger aircraft?

digitgopher
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Yigit Ozturk
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    Most are Linux, a large number are Panasonics Ex3 which is a customised *nix. I don't have reputable sources but will come back if I find some. Android is taking over and I believe that some are Windows NT based. – Simon May 09 '16 at 20:07
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    There's no one operating system. Different vendors make different systems, which run different OSes. – Zach Lipton May 09 '16 at 20:26
  • There are so many different in flight entertainment systems running on different aircraft...I think you need to narrow this down a bit (particular systems in a particular plane with a particular carrier). I'm marking it as too broad in the mean time. – Jae Carr May 09 '16 at 20:56
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    @Simon, Android is also Linux. It just isn't GNU/Linux, but some other Linux-based embedded systems aren't either. – Jan Hudec May 09 '16 at 21:57
  • FWIW, On a recent Qatar flight (a brand new A330) my IFE screen and controller crashed and had to be rebooted. The screen was running some flavour of Linux, whereas the touch-based controller was Android (complete with droid logo on reboot) – Jamiec May 10 '16 at 08:30
  • @Jamiec An ongoing, religious and off-topic debate ;) But for all practical purposes, when reporting OS pentration, Android and Linux are treated separately. Personally, with no GNU and using bionic instead I believe that Android is a distinct OS which is based on the Linux kernel. Developers certainly don't think of Android as a Linx distro. It would be like calling OSX BSD. Android => *nix is more accurate. – Simon May 10 '16 at 13:25
  • @Simon I think you @'ed the wrong person ;) – Jamiec May 10 '16 at 13:33
  • @Simon Linux refers only to the kernel, even though most think of the filesystem and utility programs as part of it when it's not. The rest of the OS is the "GNU" part. Android uses Linux. – Steve May 11 '16 at 13:48

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According to this article, Linux is at least one of the main contenders in the space, Wikipedia also makes a lose reference to Linux and cites this article as the source. Here is some photographic evidence that its Linux as well. Although I'm sure it varies by maker it seems that Linux is at least one of the main players.

SMS von der Tann
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Dave
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