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Linux To Run Sherwin-Williams Cash Registers
oilfieldtrash writes "According to this news article on Yahoo!, Sherwin-Williams will upgrade their point-of-sales systems to Linux ...
'Sherwin-Williams Co., the No. 1 U.S. paint maker, plans to convert its computers and cash registers in more than 2,500 stores to the upstart operating system in the next year and has hired International Business Machines Corp.'s services division to do the job.'"
I definately think this is a good thing for linux but how is something that's over 10 years old an up-start OS? It's good PR for sure, and definately proving something we've already known, but describing something with such lax accuracy isn't going to help.
:P
On a side note here I ran across about 10 devices like this last year that stored data and operated with cash registers. I don't remember what OS they had but it was probably some novell or DOS mix. The hardware was minimal, a single PCI slot, 12MB of memory, 800MB hard drives and all non-replacable AMB processors (probably around or under 100mhz, I can't remember).
They had floppy drives and I managed to get slackware running on one of them, but I couldn't get the internal NIC disabled (I put a NE2000 in the PCI slot), so I eventually trashed them. Let's see them try to get windows on those things
http://about.me/paultenny
I've heard that LinuxPOS is pretty decent, but never used it myself. It would not be wildly complex to write a web based POS system in Zope/PHP/Perl against PostGRE in a weekend. Hell, if you already have an online store, you already have a POS system. You just need to add the capability for a clerk to do returns and maybe some enhanced searching for in store and you're done. There are already Zope/PHP/Perl apps that do this. Check freshmeat.net and go nuts.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
The hardware store Lowes has used Linux for sometime now, on the machine they use to take job applications. The machine is an IBM running an X system with some modified version of Netscape. The GUI is a Motif type environment (you can tell just by the buttons). I took my ex-gf down there one day so she could apply, and I watched as she went through the screen. The cursor is just an X, indicating its just a bare X system... Basicly.
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Is this a sig?
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Managers will get tired of switching between Windows in the office and Linux on the sales floor, and some of them will try linux on their office computer.
That's debatable. If IBM does its job in making the POS systems usable, cashiers and managers aren't going to care what their cash registers are running. It all goes along with the "people expect shit to just work in the store" idea. Windows is good enough for the office and home, especially on the level at which these people compute. I don't see many making the connection between a POS system and their workstations (hint: one runs on hardware that usually looks little like a standard computer, and performs a limited set of functions).
In your perfect world, employees and customers would see the reliability of the Linux POS systems, and wonder how they can get that reliability at home or in the office (as you allude to). However, I look at this decision more as the orignial poster does - it's a win for the acceptance of Linux into the business services field. I don't think it will amount to much more than other companies considering Linux for their mission-critical services (it's definitely a win for IBM in that respect).
If you think writing a POS is sytem that simple go for it! I've been involved with POS since 1990 (My dad co-owned one of two POS scanning companies in Houston from 1987 to 1995, I was his lead PC tech from 1990 to 1993) and I can tell you it ain't that easy. Sure, if all you want is a basic cash register it's not too hard, but when you get into scanning it gets just a little bit harder.:)
And a web based system will NOT cut it either. You'll need an X app to compeate with the windows versions out there. Plus you'll have to write drivers for the printers, scanners (those that don't have a keyboard wedge available), scales, cash drawers, customer keyboards and the other things people hook up to a POS system.
Been there, done that, DID NOT WANT THE T-SHIRT!
BWP
P.S. This is just retail, when you get into hospitality systems (ie selling food), it gets even worse!
I worked at RadioShack for a brief stint and this is what I saw at the POS system.
a Tandy machine (no idea on speed) running Win95. It crashed REGULARLY. It was fun watching Scandisk do its thing while a customer is waiting.
The interface is a custom app that pulls its inventory data off of the 'server' sitting in the back room. To do this, each POS was networked to the 'server' in the back room. For some reason, each POS also had Serv-U FTP server running on boot. There was no cashdrawer interface as the cashdrawer was a SINGLE wooden drawer behind the desk with a 'fingercode' access inhibitor. All you needed to do was pull with your middle finger pulling the most.
IF anyone else worked at RS, tell us about it, i'm curious about the current RS situation.
--sig fault--
...is perhaps more interesting and is becoming more widespread.
Reuters recently announced that it's market news aggregation system (RMDS) is being ported to run on Linux servers. The system currently is running on Solaris and was ported to Windows (but the Windows port is no longer support/persued)
This is just the latest example of the financial industry turning to Linux. Morgan Stanely, Credit Suisse, E-Trade, the NYSE have all started to move to Linux.
It's true that the migrations are generally coming out of the hide of Solaris and AIX. IBM is coming to terms with Linux, and recent signs look hopeful that Sun will follow suite as well.
I suspect that the economy has had a hand to play in the receptiveness of the big players in the financial industry to start looking to Linux-based solutions: everyone is looking to save money right now, and I think it's no accident that the financial industry seems to be taking the lead in terms of being early adopters of Linux in the enterprise.
I can only hope that with the trend towards moving systems over to Linux, these business will be exposed to open source ideals, which -- who knows -- might one day lead to MSFTs fall from dominance.
Isn't it plausible that while Linux may be eating Unix's lunch, this gives it a better chance to spread open source/free software ideals in a new environment, which -- in the long run -- might be what takes the *big* chunk out of MSFT's hide...
All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. - Johann Sebastian Bach
This is a direct result of IBM's billion-dollar commitment to Linux last year, and Sherwin-Williams isn't the only one.
Just last week I participted in a rollout for Sears Optical (the little department inside of Sears stores that does eye exams and sells glasses, etc).
The hardware was IBM. The OS was Linux.
According to a friend-of-a-friend who is an IBM rep, IBM has already gotten their billion dollars back in increased sales, and is now ready to pump ANOTHER billion into Linux!
Politics surely does make strange bedfellows. Seems it was only a few years ago that we were calling IBM the 'evil empire' and now all of a sudden they're on our side.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
Methuseus wrote:
... save time and money".
o ce ssing.shtmlr y/1,1017,5413 , 0.html?tag=134&sb=281r e/star/staroffice/6.0/
> Get an old (free) version of Staroffice and use it to convert the files.
To what if not text?
> but you have to at least notice that your argument is stupid and
> irrational.
DavidJA wasn't arguing, but was asking perfectly valid questions:
"The question is WHY should I "upgrade" to linux????"
and
"Why would I want to change to an OS where I have to use plain old text for my word processing?"
Instead of getting insulting, why didn't you just simply answer the questions? I'm sure there is more value to Linux than a vague promise that converting all of one's files to some unknown format will somehow "in the end
I'm also sure that there are a wide variety of file formats for documents to choose from in Linux, and a few word processors that can read MS Word files with a varying degree of success. I don't know about support in Linux for the more advanced features of Word used by businesses: such as mail merge, Word document templates, forms, and VBA scripting. Of course my knowledge of current Linux features is limited to my Zaurus; OS X is my forte.
These are questions that Windows users have that are going to have to be answered if Linux is going to make it on the corporate desktop. Answering honest questions with insults and ridicule is not going to help Linux get there.
For those who want some actual facts on the subject, here's some stuff I found on Google that might help:
http://www.linuxlinks.com/local/business/wordpr
http://www.canadacomputes.com/v3/sto
http://wwws.sun.com/softwa
What happens when you embrace and extend Godzilla? Nuclear heartburn!
See "Godzilla 2000" (released in Japan as "Godzilla 2000 Millenium") for details.
I am in the process of opening a retail store, and I'm writing my own POS. I'm not using Linux. Why? The sheer complexity. I'm writing a very simple VB app against an Oracle back end, using the COM object supplied by the scanner companies. W2K is rock solid. Linux may be solid too, but there's nothing as simple, and as easy to modify as a well-written VB app for the front end. I certainly don't want to write some cryptic C app!
It might be not possible, in near future. Here is a real life example, less than a week old. I insisted on using StarOffice 5.2 to prepare a user's manual. This is not too fancy document with some simple illustrations, some text and few indexes, total about 20 pages. Result? Total failure. Here is why.
SO 5.2 actually works, in 99% of cases. But it is not good enough. I thought that the user will scream and whine forever about different buttons and different menus. Well, it stopped after a while, and he got used to the new software. This appears to be only a small problem.
The real killer problem is reliability. MS Word had more than 10 years of debugging, it is fairly stable now. SO 5.2 is not. We discovered so many obscure little bugs that by now the decision to migrate StarOffice documents to MS Word is pretty much a done deal. Among those bugs:
The point here is that businesses need reliable, robust, bulletproof wordprocessor. A secretary or a CEO don't want to see obscure dialogs. Can SO and OO get there? Sure. But it will take time, lots of it. MS used its time very wisely, and got a very strong foothold. And anyone who says "Businesses just need bold and italics" are mistaken. Businesses need all features - because technical documents are often very complex and have a maze of page styles. Your suggestion that small formatting loss is OK is not acceptable. Well, you can sell that to me, and I can sell that to you - but neither of us will convince our coworkers that they should come to work on weekends and fix conversion bugs.
So you said dependence on tools like Word will keep businesses enslaved by Microsoft. True, but most businesses don't understand that, and they don't care either. They won't migrate to anything just because it is marginally cheaper.
IMO, the way of liberating our documents is in gradual migration from Office formats to open formats and open applications. Look how Ogg Vorbis slowly but surely enters the MP3 world. Still 99% of all songs are in MP3, but more and more appear in .ogg format. When new format achieves some critical mass - and when applications are stable and good enough not just for geeks but for normal people - then they will be embraced and accepted.
WRT your idea about W3C standards; they won't be of any use without applications, and as I said, applications are very difficult to develop. Just look at Mozilla. Just look at codebase of OO. These are BIG apps. Sure, after 4 years of planet-wide debugging now Mozilla works. We need to have a wordprocessor of exceptional quality, or else it won't be accepted. Formats are secondary, and as people suggested, businesses always can have one or two copies of old Word to open old documents; PDF is for the rest of them.
Well, this comment is not very well structured, but it is good enough for posting at 3:25am ;-)