About Flying Linux

The history of Flying Linux, from its 1999 beginnings at KTH Royal Institute of Technology to our current mission in open systems editorial and guidance.

June 11, 2026 Flying Linux Editorial Team

Flying Linux began in October 1999 inside the Telecommunication Systems Lab at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm (originally nicknamed The Creature). The project was initiated with the objective of studying the feasibility of using MobileIPv4 and standard DHCP wireless access for student labs.

The resulting environment provided secure mobile connectivity for a hundred students and teachers over a 12-week intensive pilot.

The Original Wireless Infrastructure

The first Flying Linux environment relied on a customized core distribution named Bambi (specifically Bambi-6.1). It was uniquely tailored for early mobile environments and included:

  • Native support for WaveLAN/IEEE 802.11 PCMCIA wireless cards
  • Distributed file system access via AFS
  • Secure authentication using Kerberos IV and Heimdal (Kerberos V)
  • Network routing security via OpenSSH
  • Early mobile routing via MobileIP for IPv4 and AODV ad-hoc networking

The Core Server Environment

The project successfully demonstrated mobile client access thanks to a dedicated server infrastructure:

  • charon: A gigabit router providing AAA (Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting) services.
  • pluto: The DHCP and Radius server managing MAC filtering across wireless Access Points.
  • ekoxe: The LPRng print server.
  • ithaca: The MobileIP home agent running Dynamics HA.
  • polka: The Samba server enabling local integration with the AFS storage backends.
  • orwell: The network monitoring system.

The Editorial Evolution

Following the academic project course, the team continued development, refining FlyingLinux.NET as a security-oriented wireless distribution.

As wireless standards matured and became integrated into mainstream Linux distributions, the focus of Flying Linux shifted from maintaining a custom distribution to documenting, analyzing, and guiding open systems engineering.

Today, Flying Linux serves as an independent publication and knowledge hub dedicated to:

  1. Modern Systems Infrastructure: Practical architecture, containerization, and networking.
  2. Open Source Stewardship: Encouraging collaboration, software freedom, and community-driven standards.
  3. Security Engineering: Pragmatic configurations for servers, firewalls, and remote services.