Linux joins Heathrow's grounded fleet of information screens
Heathrow's information displays clearly accommodate a mixture of technologies.
Key points
- Heathrow's senior product owner for displays described the approach as a "reliable, secure solution that has a significantly lower hardware cost and are 30-40% more energy efficient than our previous hardware." Readers might be interested to know that Heathrow has spent years working on its new screens.
- UK travelers had more than fog to contend with this week, as Linux proved that if Windows could bork anything, it could bork it better.
- Spotted by Andy Hinks at Heathrow Airport's Terminal 2, this information display has seen better days.
The product owner again: "We've completely re-engineered our content distribution system to be flexible and device-agnostic." So Windows in one place, and Linux somewhere else.
While its neighbors offer walking times and terminal maps, it presents a sideways Linux boot log – useful only if your next connection involves mounting a filesystem.
Additional details
- The question is which Linux distribution is having its moment in the sun.
- Linux can evidently be just as unreliable in the right hands.
- Heathrow has been rolling out Raspberry Pi-based signage, although the Intel PRO/1000 adapter leaves the hardware behind this particular display something of a mystery.
- Pi hardware makes sense for signage: it's relatively cheap – at least until AI ate all the RAM – and low-powered compared with a full-fat Windows PC.
- The boot messages mention systemd, an Intel PRO/1000 network adapter, and an EXT4 filesystem on what appears to be a logical volume named LV_ROOT.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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