“Here’s a hint: If you want a system with high uptime, don’t use one that you KNOW FOR A FACT will crash on you every 49.7 days. Find an operating system that doesn’t have that flaw.”
Having a mission critical system that could result in deaths rely on a single desktop is foolhardy, regardless of the OS.
The accident was the result of pilot error. The pilots did not do their job. Perhaps they were trusting to the poorly designed automated systems, a sure sign of their inexperience and poor training.
On another note I wonder how many times this story will get posted.
Choice of OS can just make it even more foolhardy. I'm more fond of RTOS for this kind of work, although depending on the criticality I could see UNIX or a stripped special-purpose Linux. Minix would be about perfect for this, if it were more developed.