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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 currently admin a few stores that run a POS (Piece of Sh*t) POS (Point of Sales) program called Microbiz. It runs on Win9x, and it is an unstable piece of junk.
We need to migrate to a new software due to the fact that support will be stopping on our current software within the year. I know there is LinuxPOS, but has anyone tried it? We need a full featured POS app for a small/medium size business.
Things like this give me much hope, as I have always thought that Linux is the ideal point of sales software: it is stable, can be no frills, has good user access control, and the network and remote admin can be made easy.
Linux, while it may not be the most used for gaming and multimedia, may have a niche in the POS market. In my view, it would be the perfect OS for the retail environenment.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I hadn't even thought of cash registers and other point-of-sale systems but it figures. They need utter reliability and 100% up-time.
There is no way anybody is going to trust the collection or the handling of cash or credit card transactions to machines that are as virus prone and crashable as anything M$ puts out.
The PATH system of trains between New York and New Jersey uses some M$ box to display information to riders on iys trains and M$ is prominently displayed in all its glory when the big monitors hanging over the platforms get "Blue Screens of Death." Tens of thousands of people ride the system every day. That's GREAT advertising for M$. -NOT!
I wish somebody would replace these with some Linux servers so we riders could get systems we can use and trust.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
From the article:
But, he said, Linux isn't being asked to do too much high-stress computing here. "It's just a nice, low-cost platform for doing kind of everyday computing."
Sooo... if they actually needed it to do anything other than the computational equivalent of a nice picnic, they would gone for a "serious" OS?
Like Windows?
We run a web interface to a com object of MS Word/Excel, and people can upload files in MS format and download in a more-open format (eg, RTF/CSV).
This event may not be a win for Linux but is definitely a lose for Solaris. Sherwin Williams must have been tantalized by the latest performance results from IBM for TPC-C. Check out "IBM takes top spot in server-speed race".
IBM literally smokes with a top score of 405,000. It is a world record for Oracle atop Linux or Unix.
Around when IBM sold Business Machines?. Yes
Even managed to kludge some hardware together to drive an IBM Golfball typewriter from my Exidy Sorcerer , which at 2.1 Mhz clockrate was the fastest gun in the west. In 1978 that is. Pre-IBM-PC. Pre-Mac. Contemporary with the TRS-80 Model 1 , the Commodore PET and the Apple II. Just have a look at the Old Computer Museum reference.
So just remember that one day, arguments about RedHat vs Debian will be considered "quaint", as the newest alphageek-wannabes argue shrilly about direct-neural-induction vs alphawave-heterodyning on the new Petaflop quantum-Beowulf-cluster-wearables.
While old codgers like me will still be trying to stop said wearables from having the usual code bloat and buffer overflows caused by AOL-Time-Warner-CNN-MicroSoft-General Motors-Unilever-Bell-Boeing-PepsiCo 31337 hackers rather than Software Engineers.
Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
Dunno if it's a success story but here is a link to a similar roll-out of linux as a POS.
Burlington Coat Factory
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So what? It is just this kind of boring infrastructural stuff that holds the world together. If Linux can run a cash register well enough that the company can almost forget that it even -has- cash registers (i.e. high reliability / availability coupled with low upkeep); then this is a big win in the long term.
Other people with cash registers (particularly the Windows-based ones) are going to look at Sherwin-Williams and go "hey, I think those guys are on to something" and at least think about converting when the time comes to do so.
Personally, I would like to see this one succeed.
There are multiple reasons not to switch from Windows to commercial Unix. One is that Unix workstations are an order of magnitude more expensive, and the software is similarly expensive. Commercial Unix has never been priced such that you can put a box on every desk in every office.
For that matter, you're not going to have as easy a time giving your workers machines that their consumer hardware (e.g., pilot cradle) plugs into.
People who work for radio stations still listen to regular stereos at their desks, because it doesn't make sense to give everyone the high-end equipment when they don't need it. But if the high-end equipment was free and had jacks for normal headphones and played all of the media that normal people have, they'd probably switch to using it, since it's better and there are people around who know how to manage it.
It is a *really* exciting one for two reasons:
1/ A somehow big company is moving towards an Open Source solution. Big companies pushing Open Source means a lot.
2/ It shows how a third party enterprise can make money upon Open Source software. In this case it's IBM the one (thus paying back its effort on the Open Source environment). IBM can now choose to return any code modifications as open source, thus making more probably for other clients to recall IBM's servicies in this area (that was a big part about what did Ars Digita profitable before the VC's entry) or they can leave the modifications for them (they are not delivering or, at most they should only deliver the sources to their clients) expecting to re-double benefits with next client (probably a bad move but, hey, it's their decition)