[NTLUG:Discuss] what companies are using linux in the dfw area?

[Steve Baker]

james osburn wrote:

> general question:
> 
> what companies are using linux in the dfw area?

LOTS of places are using them for servers, firewalls,
gateways of various kinds...probably too many companies to list.

However, I work for L3 Simulation in Arlington - we make flight
simulators - and just about everything we sell runs on Linux:
the flight simulator itself, all of the graphics systems, etc.

Obviously most of our software engineering development happens
on Linux desktops - but getting our support groups (human
resources, payroll, management, marketing, etc) to switch to
Linux is definitely an uphill struggle - all of that stuff is
very Windows-centric still.

The graphics system of a top-of-the-line flight simulators
runs on 40 PC's in a gigantic render-farm putting out ultra-high
res graphics onto ten rear-projection systems making a dodecahedral
dome around the pilot and his simulated cockpit.  Then we have
bunches of other PC's doing infrared and night vision sensors,
radar, audio, etc.   In the future, we can see systems with
perhaps 128 PC's working cooperatively to produce graphics comparable
in resolution to the human eye.

Each of the graphics PC's has a state-of-the-art nVidia graphics
card (although we also support ATI and 3DLabs hardware) - we're
currently rolling out GeForce 6800 Ultra's on 3.6GHz motherboards
with 2Gb RAM each and 1GHz Ethernet connectivity.  All of the graphics
boxes are diskless (for reasons of space, cost, reliability, ease
of software maintenance, etc).

We have our own Linux distro (heavily stripped down and set up for
diskless operation) loosely based on Gentoo - and we do development on
RedHat and SuSE.  Software is in a mix of languages - but the
graphics stuff that I do is all in C++/OpenGL/X11.

There is just no way we could do what we do without Linux.  Keeping
a network of 40 diskless/keyboardless/mouseless PC's running and booting
off a single hard drive whilst retaining gigahertz networking between
them and realtime performance...I wouldn't want to touch that problem
with Windows!

The reason this has been possible is that 6 or 7 years ago, we were
using *huge* Silicon Graphics machines running IRIX - so the move to
Linux was pretty natural - and suprisingly painless.

...and yes, we are recruiting *experienced* programmers in some
departments - call 817 619 2000 and ask for the Human Resources
Department.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
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