In this paper, we present a linear controller for attitude of aircraft. We use a rotational matrix in one approach and a quaternion in the other approach. We also find some interesting mathematical properties concerning a symmetric rotational matrix and we use these properties to analyze the stability of the proposed control law. We find that the quaternion approach is better than rotational matrix approach because there exists no singular region problem in quaternion approach. On the other hand, singular region problem may happens in rotational matrix approach. The controller structure of the quaternion is also very simple compared with the one proposed by using a rotational matrix approach. We make use Matlab Simulink to simulate and illustrate the theoretical claims. The graphic animation program is developed based on Open-GL for the computer simulation of the proposed control algorithm.