ISS goes to Linux

Keith Chuvala, an employee of the United Space Alliance and head of the department responsible for laptops and networks on the ISS, recently said why NASA decided to switch all computers to the ISS on Linux :

We transferred key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed a stable and reliable operating system, one that would allow us to get full control. And if we needed to fix, adjust, or adapt something, we could do it.

Debian 6 was chosen as the main distribution. Linux has already been used in some onboard systems of the ISS since its inception ( eng pdf ), but until recently, Windows was still a priority OS for personal computers.

In addition, it is reported that Linux will be used in a futuristic robot-astronaut Robonaut , designed to help astronauts, performing heavy and dangerous work both at the station itself and in outer space.
Especially for the ISS team, the Linux Foundation Training, led by Dominic Duval, has created several Linux development trainings - Introduction to Linux for Developers and Developing Applications For Linux. According to Chuval, the prepared materials pleased the team:

At first, I was worried that some of our techies would be bored. But that did not happen. On the contrary, people were very interested.

Duval also notes the flexibility of the program:

NASA is as heterogeneous as possible. They have both heavy Debian distributions and various versions of RHEL and Centos. Since our training is flexible from the point of view of the distributions in question, we were able to pack all of these different environments into a single training session. No other training organization can provide this.

So it seems that Linuxoids have an impenetrable argument for holivars - "but Linux is used on the ISS!"