Australia, China and Snowboard Shops Use Linux

Miscellaneous stories about Linux usage today: the Australian government has allowed (but not required) its agencies to switch to Linux. China is apparently going to go all-Linux for the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing. And business2.com has a story about chain of snowboarding shops (and other businesses) deploying Linux cash registers and desktops.

Comments

In the spirit of MLP

[King of the World]

In New Zealand the first semi-major national chain company has come out with a Linux box. Go to dse.co.nz and search for Mandrake. Until now it was only "mom and pop" (as American's would say) stores, and then you go an empty machine.

Important to remember

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux being adopted in more places isn't necessarily a victory. If it performs badly, they will just switch back to Windows or UNIX. I hope, really, that they have decided on Linux because they believe it's the best tool for the job, and not simply to cut costs or to rebel against Microsoft. If Linux is the right tool for the job, only then is it really a victory. I would be cautiously optimistic about Linux being used on more and more places.

Re:Important to remember

[rovingeyes]

I hope, really, that they have decided on Linux because they believe it's the best tool for the job, and not simply to cut costs or to rebel against Microsoft.

I can agree with the part of Linux being right for the job but I beg to disagree that govts are not doing these to cut costs. A major decision in any govt approach to a new idea or technology is primarily driven by costs. Hell, even new guns have to confirm to a set price by govt, only then govt will buy them in bulk. And we all know the licensing policy of M$ is a real pain in the ass.

Re:Important to remember

[Blackneto]

I think it is a victory.
The people that provide cash registers and POS systems are always looking to lower the bottom line to increase profits. Licensing OS's to run thier software on adds that much more. They also need to have a stable platform to base thier systems on to keep the customers happy. If Linux succeeds there, then it will get noticed by others in the industry and word will spread by mouth and trade magazines.
Maybe partially related... Compaq's new Smartstart 6.0 CD is Linux based. this allows them to get out of the licensing from MS for thier server configuration software. Before they had to pay MS for each CD they pressed because they were using a Windows platform.

Joe Sixpack may not notice all this, but the people that spend the big money are starting to.

Re:Important to remember

[moz25]

Well, there is another factor as well: the OS is open. I think this is a major issue for a government - it's a rather strange situation for your government secrets to be stored on machines that are run by a closed system delivered by a foreign company that may or may not be cooperating in snooping.

I would hope, btw, that such deployment would have as a direct effect that much more work will be done on improving linux desktop capabilities and speeds... the speeds I'm getting on default installations is not very motivating.

Re:Important to remember

[Savage-Rabbit]

If I remember correctly the Chinese adopted LINUX because of the Open Source system which guarantees that there are no CIA,NSA... etc... back doors in the code, and even if there are backdoords a codereview will find them. One of the main motivations would thus have been that they did not trust Microsoft to stand up to the pressure to integrate backdoors for US security/intelligence services in their Windows dialects. Germany is following a similar trend. Although they keep ranting on about cost cutting, word has it, that a condsiderably larger part of the real reason than the German Govt. would like to admit in public is a desire for increased security. And Germany is not alone in this either, I suspect that more countries will take a second look at LINUX now that G. W. Bush Jr. is in the White House ensuring that the worlds trust in the USAs trustworthyness has reached a new low point. It would appear that the xerox spycam episode and how it was used to spy on enemies as well as allies has not been entirely forgotten after all. You can of course gripe about this being ancient history but there are more recent examples, such as the NSA abusing the ECHELON system for industrial espionage. Not that I as a European am pissed about this sort of thing, we do industrial espionage over here too. It is a grand old tradition as old as humanity and occasionally we over here in the old world even manage to sc*ew US companies in the b*tt just like the US Govt sc*ewed Airbus. I bet you are now tempted to write me off as an anti Microsoft NUTTER, but I fail to see why we should make it easy for the USA to sabotage our industry or read our private files off our hard disk. Lets face it, it is alot harder to keep the NSAs nose out of ones data with M$ Windows (notice I put the fashioable $ sign in the Microsoft ancronym) than it is to protect ones privacy under LINUX.

2 more years

[e8johan]

Just wait for two more years and some european goventment agencies will probably be dominated by open source software. The countries I'm thinking of are Germany, England, Sweden and Spain. All these contries have initialized open source studies or started with test installations of open source alternatives.

When looking at what software that is used, it looks like KDE has an edge in Europe, specially in Germany and Sweden. But also OpenOffice is actively evaluated.

Re:2 more years

[Kenzai]

Norwegian govt. agencies are already in the process of adopting Linux solutions, after the M$ govt. deal was booted. The University enviroments in Norway are solid in Linux kowledge (Unix too of course) great for recruitment (lets not forget TrollTech). There is a remote education system run on Linux by a facutly (ILS) at the Univ. of Oslo with several schools countrywide participating - at 1/3 of the price that IBM offered an equivalent commercial system based on M$.

I think this article is great and especially China who have already adopted Linux within several govt. agencies. The Olympics are of such importance to them internationally that they would not risk it on a unreliable OS (events like this rely alot on such systems - worked with it at the Winter Olympics in '94). China will make this work and it must really rattle the M$ cage!

My 0.02

Snowboarding shops using Linux...

[Xpilot]

...and the mental image I get is a penguin on a snowboard. I think I've seen a rendered image of that somewhere...

how bizarre

[sssmashy]

The move enforces the Chinese government's stance as a champion of the development of independent operating systems.

Ironic, considering the Chinese government's stance as a champion of the repression of independent belief systems...

Goodbye Sun?

[lpret]

I noticed that in the article one of their "two" user groups were high end programmers/engineers. There was a quote from a Verizon guy saying: "moving 300 programmers at its nationwide IT facilities from expensive Sun and Hewlett-Packard (HWP) workstations to less expensive models running Linux.".
Is this really a viable option? I'm not talking about "can get along with" software, but truly impressive and equal/better than Sun boxes? If so, and if it's only down to software, where does Sun stand in this?

I would submit for your approval. . .

[kfg]

the hypothesis that being Open Source (tm) is one of the things that can be legitimately considered as one of the parameters to decide whether it's "the right tool for the job"?

Indeed that being Open Source (tm) is a possible *feature* that might be valued?

KFG

Re:I would submit for your approval. . .

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I think, unfortunately, that your hypothesis is wrong in the majority of cases. Whether software comes with source code or not matters to some people, certainly, but not to most. And if it matters at all, it can just as easily be a liability as it can an asset.

Ninety-nine out of a hundred people literally wouldn't know source code if they saw it, so having it is no tangible benefit to them. In fact, it can easily be seen as a liability, because most of the software that is available in source code form is not supported by any vendor. If a company were to adopt a piece of open-source software that was only supported by an individual or a small group, and that individual or group were to stop developing and supporting that software, the company would have no choice but to accept responsibility for supporting the code themselves. (Or to quickly adopt something else.) That's a serious liability to, say, a company that makes point-of-sale systems.

Not every open-source program would be susceptible to such an event. But most of them would, and that-- if anything-- is what non-computer people will associate with the words "open source." "Open source," most often, means flying without a net.

Again, just to emphasize, I'm not talking about facts here. I'm talking about generalities, and the perceptions that are based on those generalities.

Re:I would submit for your approval. . .

[kfg]

Is that a yes or a no? It's hard to tell. I'd have to guess by your qualification of "the majority of cases" that it's a *yes.*

Nor were we contextually discussing the majority of cases so I'm left to assume you took this as an opportunity to make your point irrespective of the topic, per se.

I can tell you for sure that if I were a Chinese government agency the idea of running propriatary American code would spook the living bejeezus out of me. I'd also put forth as a hypothesis that * the government of China* has a peck of programer power at its beck and call. Just as an educated guess mind you.

There are crack programers beyond the American shores. Linus is a Finn. Alan Cox is English. The two most obvious cases that come to mind.

The Chinese developed the A-bomb, H-bomb and ICBM's all without American aid at all. I'd hazard they've got a person or two who can manage to find their way around in postgres and Abiword. I'd wager even their lowliest "steno pool girls" could manage to whack out a memo in vi. Just because it's become culturally "de riguer" in Santa Monica to pass "meet me for lunch" notes as PowerPoint presentations doesn't mean the whole world works to those standards.

Governments are one of the *prime* "customers" for which having source is more often a valuable feature than otherwise.

As for point of sale systems that, oddly enough, is a field I've actually worked in. Point of Sales systems are almost *invariably* developed in house, either as a propriatary product for resale to vendors, or by the vendors themselves. One of the reasons MS has begun it's "shared code" program is directly due to the demand from such developers for code access. Point of Sale systems have been one of the fields that open source OS's have made the greatest inroads into specifically because of the availability of code down to the lowest level. Developers of Point of Sales systems aren't "abandoned" of support. It's *their* code. What worries them most is being dicked around by *their OS supplier.* What's more, those vendors that buy their Point of Sale systems from a developer almost invariably * demand source* as part of the sales contract to protect themselves in case the supplier goes under.

Point of Sales was perhaps the worst example you could have chosen.

Now the fact of the matter is that I don't give a hoot about actually having the source code to vim personally. I guess this is "the majority of cases" you're talking about.

On the other hand, because vim *is* open source and uses open formats for its output * it doesn't matter a hoot to me* if the developers "abandon" it. Transfering my data to a new "vendors" product takes. . .well, no time at all actually. Not to mention the fact that if it's "abandoned" * it still works.*

You see, most of the time people suffer when a code maintainer has abandoned them is *because* the code and it's file formats are propriatary!

Ironically in my own businesses I've more often suffered *because* the code maintainer of a propriatary bit of software kit continued to "develop" it.

Trust me on this one. I know. If you're running your *own* small business and the cost of your software being "maintained" by a propriatary vendor is coming out of your *own* pocket instead of going to food on your table you become really, really aware of the "feature" that Open Source software offers.

emacs doesn't break. emacs writes perfectly good internal memos and business letters. I've never had an ascii text file rejected because someone couldn't open it under their OS. ascii doesn't change its "file format" every three years to force me to buy a new text processor. If I need a "feature" in emacs I can either add it myself or have one of my people do it ( I hire smart people). If I need something fancier than plain text emacs produces nifty HTML and XHTML.

Just one download and I had all my text processing needs taken care of, essentially, forever!

I rather fancy the government of China has considered *these very issues.*

What is the number one "feature" most people claim for MS Office. Why, that it shares files with . . . MS Office.

Well, if you are a government, and you have the power of fiat to declare yourself MS free. . .that "feature" kinda goes "Poof," don't it?

All of a sudden Kword looks mighty tasty. . .and it works! Hell, if they stopped "maintaining" it it could even be a boon because now you'ld have a working and *long term stable* product.

But then, as you have the grace to admit in your closing, you weren't talking about facts anyway. Now were you?

KFG

Wierd steganography in the Olympics article?

[tulare]

I was having to highlight over the text to deal with a wierd OS X issue where text randomly disappears (IE, Moz, doesn't matter) when I noticed a bunch of letters in the spaces between some of the words. The text isn't justified in any way that I could see, just left-aligned, so these weren't some kind of spacing tool, so I can't figure this out. I did a view source, and here's a bit chopped out of the article:

system<font color=white>U</font>and other information<font color=white>A</font>systems will be built for<font color=white>U</font>collecting, collating, disseminating<font color=white>E</font>and

Does anyone have any idea what the heck this is all about? One pattern I do seem to be noticing is that the "hidden" letters are all vowels.

Re:Wierd steganography in the Olympics article?

[Yohimbe]

Imagine you were the wire service that provided the article. This is a good way of identifying your text. A copy paste into an editor loses the color tags. Then they've gotta clean it. Its a form of copy protection. Security by inconvenience. (hey, isn't that what MS provides? ... (Obligatory MS baiting, as per Slashdot Rules Paragraph 1.2.b)

Re:Wierd steganography in the Olympics article?

[CurlyG]

Its a form of copy protection. Security by inconvenience.

That's a cool idea...

This is the sequence - anyone recognise it?

UUAUEAIAEUAUEUAAAAIAIUEUUIEIUAUIUUIAEAEEUEAAUEAEAU EEEUEAEUEIEAIEUEUIEIAU

I'd like to implement something like this, but I wonder if there's not a more subtle way to do it...

Re:What are they running?

[Graspee_Leemoor]

Hehe, I got all defensive for a minute because I read it as "piece of shit software".

graspee

2008

[hdparm]

Too bad it's summer games. For the winter olyimpics mascot choice would be easy :)

Re:Ideal for many of my friends.

[hdparm]

Let them check

http://linux.gen.nz/supply.html

There's a list of companies that supply Linux preloaded on new machines. No dual boot, just pure Linux.

Oh, okay....

[Lagrange5]

I almost thought it said...

Australia, China Snowboard Shops Use Linux

...and I quickly thought,

Wait, there are snowboard shops in China???

Hey, you never know. Someday...

POS and Enterprise system on Unix/Linux

[DrainBead]

http://www.proiv.com/0025664A00363AEA/pages/4GL/$F ile/4gl.pdf is an interesting PDF on how Nandos Chickenland is moving to Unix/Linux (with the help of 4GLSystems) in their Enterprise Management Systems. While Linux is becomming more and more mainstream (even my technophobic Dad asked me about "that new thingy giving Microsoft headaches"), IMHO the future of a similar market penetration for Linux as M$ has (at least in the desktop market) is still far off. And perhaps it would be better if it never arrived?!?

Important news for Bill and Steve

[pubjames]

I've got some information for Bill Gates and Steve Ballamer that could help them save money. If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, can you please pass the information on?

You can get some really great deals on international flights by booking a "round the world" ticket. With these tickets you can stop off at a large number of different destinations on a trip around the world and pay a single low price. A friend of mine paid about $2000 to stop at 40 different destinations on five continents!

I hope this helps.

Sportmart!

[astrosmash]

Up here in Canada Sportmart runs what I assumed to be Linux on its cash registers. It was definitely Gnome with the Sawfish window manager, default 1.2 theme.

At the time I figured it was "native" (svga) gnome, since who would be crazy enough to run X on a cash register, but does svga gnome use a window manager? Yikes.

"Okay, with tax the total comes to 75 dollars and... whoops! X crashed. Hold on a minute while I hack on XF86Config."

"Hey, listen. The cash register is thrashing again. Skate or Die dude!"

Well, as long as their GUI isn't rendered in OpenGL I guess they'd be okay.

From small acorns grow strong oaks

[Action_Jax]

This sort of coverage is great news,

I've been going around trying to convince my clients that Linux is a viable corporate alternative ( see here) and every story avocating its use for political (free speech), environmental (recycling and making those old 386s usable again), societal (adding value to people in third-world countries) and technological (A Globally Wide pool of people with diverse ideas rather than those in Redmond) as well as valid business reasons (increases profitability, adds value, reduces costs, etc) make the Linux argument even stronger.

We need more of the "I switched to Linux because it was good for my business model" rather than "I switched cos Microsoft was mean and horrible to me so I took my ball and went to another park" because mean and 'orrible Microsoft will just replace the usual suspects with new friendly (and more insidious) faces and rebrand themselves as the NEW microsoft and pull those customers back in again (Hey look they said they were sorry and I can go back to the park again).

Action

Zumiez runs Evolution over Outlook as well...

[SystemOfTheAnimal]

My friend Kevin's dad owns Zumiez (which is the chain the article mentioned) and some of my friends are responsible for installing the Linux boxes they mentioned. In addition to the Linux cash registers, they also installed Evolution for the store managers to use. This was a conscious choice over Outlook.
So put your money where your mouth is and support Zumiez- they're a great company.

Re:RedHat is mollycoddling Chinese dictators

[pamri]

The problem is solved.

The realities of switching to linux

[codepunk]

I just gave a linux presentation to a partner vendor company of ours yesterday. The one thing you have to remember is that neither one our companies produces commercial software. Both of our business's are in the manufacturing areana. We showed them our manufacturing terminals running kde and our custom applications and needless to say they where shocked at the simplicity and capabilities. The only thing they cared about was the incredible way it brings computing everywhere at a very low cost. Being a manufacturing company it allows us to expand our computing environment at little cost. During a rough economy this allows us to take deep product cost cuts to take business from our competitors. The use of linux is a competitive advantage, plain and simple.

Re:What are they running?

[Soko]

I've been actively researching this for quite some time now. I've come up with a few:

L'AnePOS - written in Perl, uses Tcl/TK for admin, PostgreSQL backend. Nice system, but the code needs cleanup. The project admin told me he should be updating it very soon.

Compiere - Whole ERP/CRM package including POS. Too big for small shops, just right for medium. Oracle backend, tho - expect to pay a bit for that.

BananaPOS - Not sure, development seems erratic.

There's JPos as well, though I'm not sure what backend it uses and Mercator, which is still in Alpha. I'm trying to get a project called Poszilla off the ground, too - Point of Sale based on Mozilla, which would truly be be platform independant, maybe even DB independant.

GPLed Point of Sale is getting there, I guess.

Soko