Linux rebooting on my Continental flight to HKG

It can be a little unsettling when you see rows of text scrolling down the screen in front of you when sitting in an airplane. That happened twice during my flight to Hong Kong yesterday, as the captain needed to reboot the server running the touch-screen system controlling on-board entertainment and flight status.

I'm not so surprised that they use Linux. It's pretty nice to see the text cascading across the screen -- I'm getting perhaps a strong sense of familiarity.