Sure, Linux powers servers, supercomputers, smartphones—and nuclear submarines. In 2004, the UK’s Royal Navy quietly replaced its legacy proprietary OS with a custom hardened version of Linux aboard its Vanguard-class ballistic missile subs. Admiralty brass quickly realized that open-source software was not only cheaper, but more secure and reliable. So yes, beneath icy ocean depths lurks a crew debugging cron jobs, patching kernels, and swearing at systemd. Torvalds probably never imagined his pet kernel would someday sleep beside nuclear warheads, ready to deliver catastrophic payloads to far-flung shores—assuming, of course, that systemd doesn’t crash first.
