In space there's no room for errors, and although the laptops aboard the International Space Station are not mission critical, they'll now say goodbye to their trusted Windows XP and say hello to a more reliable and secure Linux OS (Debian 6). The switch from Windows XP to Linux will enhance the security and reliability of onboard laptops.
If you think being in space would mean these Window computers would be safe from earthly worms... you'd be wrong. There's at least one confirmed incident when these computers were infected by a "digital worm", when a russian cosmonaut brought his infected laptop (in 2008) and it quickly spread to the other PCs. With Debian, it's far less likely a rootkit/virus will somehow get into their machines - as well as it gives them full control to patch the operating system as they see fit in the upcoming years.
Hopefully, no one will be doing a "rm -rf" onboard... :)
(rm -rf is "delete everything" command... and is considered one of the "no-no" commands for Linux newbies)
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