Flying in economy class doesn't have to be a miserable experience. To make flying more enjoyable for its passengers, Singapore Airlines Ltd. is adding bigger screens, more in-flight movies and a PC, running Red Hat Inc.'s distribution of the Linux operating system, in every seat on its newest planes.

A photo sent from a friend showing an embedded Linux entertainment system on Vietnam Airlines.

From airlines to open source software, Red Hat’s global CEO Jim Whitehurst has made a smooth transition. Mr Whitehurst, who was the chief operating officer(COO) of Delta Airlines in his earlier stint, and helped the bankrupt airline return to profits, is now at the helm of open source software vendor Red Hat, which competes with firms several times its size such as Microsoft and Oracle.

This unhappy tale brought tears to my eyes...tears of laughter: The continuing saga of Billy Goats and Steve Ballsup. Are these two for real?

Red Hat's CEO Jim Whitehurst has good reason to be optimistic. In his first full year as CEO of the Linux vendor, Whitehurst, a former Delta Airlines executive, has managed to pilot Red Hat into growth territory despite the overall turbulence in the global economy.

It's been exactly a year since former Delta Airlines vice president turned Red Hat chief executive Jim Whitehurst criticized open-source vendors for doing a lousy job of getting customers involved in the community and projects. Twelve months on, how are things looking?

When Matthew Szulik left Red Hat abruptly for family health reasons in December, many people were scratching their heads over the company's new choice of CEO: a young executive from Delta Airlines, Jim Whitehurst. But Whitehurst's chief operating officer title at Delta and position outside of the technology industry are misleading; a peek into his past reveals a computer science degree and a passion for open source technology, not to mention a smooth operator who helped bring a struggling airline out of bankruptcy.

I'D like to start by asking you a series of seemingly unrelated questions. Have you watched Shrek or Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone? Have you flown on Continental, Virgin America or Singapore Airlines? Do you drive a BMW, Fiat or Renault car? Are you serving in the United States Army? Have you ever bought anything online using Paypal? Have you ever stayed in a Sheraton hotel?

CNET news is reporting that Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik is stepping down effective January 1st and handing control of the world’s most popular enterprise Linux provider to former Delta airlines COO James Whitehurst. The article assures us that Mr. Whitehurst used to be a programmer and in fact runs four distributions of Linux at home (Fedora, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, and … DSL? I’m curious to know what they are…).