Which operating system will still be in use in the 23rd century?
For the fictional inhabitants of critically acclaimed sci-fi series The Expanse the answer is Linux. In Season 1 Episode 9 (around the 27 minute mark, if you’re curious) one of the character’s hand terminal shows code from the Linux kernel.
The Expanse is a multi-layered space opera that weaves the political machinations of multiple earth colonies scattered throughout the solar system with a set of deeper, over-arching mysteries and conspiracies.
The Expanse is like Game of Thrones meets House of Cards, but in zero-gravity.
Back to the episode “Critical Mass”, and a snippet of scrolling text at the top of character Chrisjen Avasarala’s (achingly futuristic) hand terminal caught the eye of an avid Redditor.
Assuming the code might give clues to the series’ on-going mysteries — what exactly is Chrisjen looking at? — they did some digging to find out what the on-screen readout means:
What they discovered is certainly a plot twist — if not a narrative one!
The blinking text doesn’t seem to have any in-show meaning but it will be of interest to Linux fans because, as the poster notes, the code is “…groups.c from version 3.x of the Linux kernel.”
Which is kinda cool, isn’t it!
Earth seems a bit more of a Windows-y place to me: functional, unloved, and clinically utilitarian. If any colony in the solar system was going to opt for Linux surely it’d be the ingenious, do-it-yourself folks living on the belt?
via TheFaldor