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McDonald's Germany Moves to SuSE Linux
sglafata writes "Novell has made an announcement that McDonald's is moving towards Linux. 'With more than 30,000 restaurants around the globe and more than 1,200 in Germany alone, McDonald's is the undisputed market leader in the fast food sector.'"
From the press release:
McDonald's Germany deploys SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server for DNS, FTP, and proxy services on the Internet.
I count three servers there, and "FTP" hardly strikes me as a core service for a fast-food company. This is your typical press-release, intended to produce hype but without a lot behind it. It strikes me as grandstanding by Novell since everyone knows McDonalds uses SCO Unix for many of their POS terminals and someone who reads this headline quickly may think they're ripping out Unix and putting in Linux. Sorry, only three boxes at play here.
And no, I'm not defending SCO, I'm just saying this press release doesn't mean much.
The store I worked in back in HS had one old ass 'server' which all the terminals and printers were networked to, using 10base2 no less! :)
I had to replace segments of of coax frequently as people would yank them out of the walls while moving equipment for cleaning (yes, we cleaned. I held the record for fastest spotless kitchen close @ 12 minutes flat). I was the only one with a clue, and the store manager didn't want to call in a service tech if he could get me to do it for free.
The server would dial-up at the end of the day to the franchise's office, probably a cron job. I wasn't allowed to touch that though. Damn shame, it was probably my only chance to touch some ancient crap hardware.
"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
There is actually a much more interesting press release on the Novell website about NetWare and McDonald's Brazil. It is unclear whether or not Germany was running SCO Unix on the servers before the switch to Linux, but SCO is apparently not a worldwide McDonald's affiliate, as McDonald's Brazil has been running NetWare for 15 years. This article also gives much more information about the IT infrastructure of McDonald's, since the slashdot article just made me think "How many DNS, FTP, and Proxy servers can McDonald's Germany possibly have?". McDonald's Brazil, which is about the same size as McDonald's Germany, has 6 giant servers in different locations accross the country, and each one has a huge database for all of the information of each restaurant, plus the administrative information. You have to remember that a lot of the IT related stuff is for McDonald's huge corperate staff, not the people taking your order. The other interesting thing is that McDonald's is completely centralized, so if a server failure occurs, and the in-store machines can't connect with a central database, they apparently can't take orders or give receipts out at the actual restaurants.
i just checked - that is actually a quote :S
The thing is that they were FORMER customers who no longer had any SCO contracts. In the case of DaimlerChrysler they hadn't been using SCO products for seven years. I believe AutoZone completely phased out SCO operating systems a couple of years ago. In these cases SCO really didn't have much to lose. It would be far more suicidal of SCO to go after a current customer who provides them with a very large portion of there OS revenue. A threat of a lawsuit against McDonalds might scare them back to SCO or more likely McDonalds would terminate all future contracts and begin switching over to something other than SCO.
It's a chameleon called Geeko.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Okay, I wasn't going to be a dick about this, but it has been repeated three times without anybody mentioning it, so I gotta step in and point out that a co-op is a place where the shoppers have a financial stake in the management.
A "coop" is a house for animals like a chicken coop.
A "coup", as in the French phrase "coup d'etat" is a striking victory. It was also used as a reference to the Native American tradition of touching one's enemy in battle to demonstrate your dominant skill and control over the battle.
A "coupe" is a type of car body.
To "coo" is to speak in a murmuring tone much like that of a pigeon.
So, this time I'm going to let you all go. But if it happens again. . . well, I'll kick your fucking asses.
a coop for linux.
coop A cage or pen for confining poultry
coup A notable or strikingly successful move.
Do you really think Tux belongs in a coop?
Reminds me how ugly C code is. *shudder*
For those that are unaware, Sun's HME interface is known as "Happy Meal Ethernet".
Seems like lots of European companies are moving over. Norwegian Postal Service is moving to Linux from Windows on the desktop.
Je ne parle pas francais.
According to Snopes you're a damn liar.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
In real corporate environments no, specially ftp that would compromise the other two.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I don't know much about the systems in Brazil, but I can state with certainty that the recommended US POS system does not require any sort of WAN to function. Most stores' only connectivity is a dial-up modem connected to their back-office computer.
In fact, you could cut every single network cable in a US McDonald's restaurant and they would still be able to sell hamburgers, albiet with limited functionality in many respects.
I know you're not serious but you should know that Germany is experiencing what is most kindly referred to as a tech slowdown, and more honestly referred to as: Today, there are nearly four hundred long-term unemployed, well qualified (Masters' degrees or more) tech specialists looking for a job in my (small) city alone. And my city is peanuts compared to Frankfurt. It's tiny.
So don't try this at home, at least unless you have two degrees and preferably a PhD as well as being mother-tongue bilingual in German and English, and maybe in another language too, have kept German-style Letters Of Reference throughout your professional career and you have friends in reasonably high places or are naturally lucky. In a year or so it should be safe to try again (goes my optimistic viewpoint), but in the meantime there are better places to be, like just about anywhere else, except for on LinuxTag of course.
The German tech scene has been in trouble for a while now, probably ever since CeBIT ceased being anything but an intrabusiness marketing forum. As with everywhere, the year 2000 was a fun time here, but this spring's CeBIT was just depressing. New and cool stuff is mostly coming from elsewhere - German industry has done what the tech industry does at times like this, which is to dump R&D and fall back on selling management 'skills'. Curled up like a stunned hedgehog, in other words, and never mind the obvious prick jokes.
McDs in Australia uses 100% Australian beef and they even proudly advertise it on the environmentally unfriendly wrapper.
I've looked at a Pizza Hut installation (they run SCO server software, similar to McD's)... It's a PC running SCO unix in the back office, hooked up to the POS terminals using serial ports. Once a day it dials up (POTS modem) the "home office" to upload the days transactions and place orders.
Novell isn't German and they bought SUSE last year.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Most McDonald's have the following setup (in the US AFAIK, yes I used to work for McDonald's): 2 servers, 1 for serving the terminals, 1 for the private-eye system (to control the average of 23 cameras in a store). The terminals (the "ordering" terminals) all use MS-DOS embedded.
The main reason for this is: the terminals connect to server 1 to retrieve information, mostly screen layout, what server(s) to send information to (orders taken, etc.). MS-DOS is used because the power can be cut off/on with minimal startup/shutdown times. The terminal server also has access to reboot the terminals themselves. The terminals are completely dependant on the terminal server to run correctly.
Some of the terminals aren't completely dumb terminals (some have hard drives), and of course there are specialized terminals. In a dual-booth (front drive thru and back drive thru as we call it) there are 2 terminals in each booth. In front drive thru there is a monitor that shows orders. The terminals can change functions, too: can be a cashier, order-taker, or both at once.
So back to the topic: are they switching the server, terminals, or both? The server I can see, but the terminals would be a bit harder.
Are they even switching the in-store system? I doubt it (as parent poster said). The current system works and is pretty stable. So... my whole post is moot. Good day.
Since the parent post was modded "interesting" instead of "funny," here's the snopes.com page...
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?