Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
so, are they going to start serving penguinburgers?
Will they use the money saved to use better meat?
Or should I say, will they use the money saved to buy ACTUAL meat?
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
I thought the Hamburglar was already working with SCO.
Would this be a conflict of interest?
Time to update your success story pages again.
Regards,
Linus
That's really exciting--maybe they'll switch to high quality food now, too.
But seriously...
I doubt that they'll replace their in-store systems. There's no real need there--most places are running something really ancient that still works. However, I wouldn't mind seing a penguin or two while I'm ordering... and, with all that money they've got, who knows?
. . . if Darl is dreaming of a McLicense with Coke®?
Slackware - because apt is for the lazy.
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.
SCO has, for some time, told anyone who will listen that McDonalds cash registers run SCO Unix. Micky-dees is one of their largest customers.
Correction: WAS one of their largest customers!
When it rains it pours, eh?
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Without the power of Windows they'll be bankrupt within months. I know that because I have a certificate.
Novell is back - they convinced thousands of businesses to network in the 1980s and 1990s. And now they're selling Linux and support to more businesses. Which will need Linux software, and pay to get it. Either in cash, to developers, or in GPL code they revise and publish. The economic network effect will see Linux value increase exponentially as more nodes in the value net grow yet more nodes, passing value back and forth among the network - all paved with Linux. I haven't been this happy about Utah and Germany swinging together since the last Olympic skiing broadcasts.
--
make install -not war
McDonald's is trying to make new inroads with the wildlife-loving set. After penguin burgers they will be introducing the wildly successful Baby Seal breakfast sausage. But the tastiest addition to their menu will be the Bald Eagle McNuggets. Yum!
..Thought Linux didn't have driver support for their chips...
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
It's interesting that this has come about because I had a long discussion with a friend today who was ruminating over whether to pursue a career in IS related to Unix or Microsoft.
A cursory glance of the job opportunities seemed to indicate to him that getting MCSE certification was a wiser move than going into the Unix arena. He asked me, "If unix is so much better, why are there more Microsoft-related jobs?" And is Unix the future or is this just a fad?
I couldn't help but think that in my mind, Microsoft-based corporate IT setups are often more political than practical. Yes, you'll find more jobs with MCSE but it's not because there are necessarily more opportunities. It's because Microsoft-based tech people burn out more quickly, and often the companies they work for make politically-oriented tech decisions over what is practical and economical. It's almost like a litmus test for good corporate management these days. If a big company is using Unix, that's a sign they give their IT department substantive authority to pick the best tools for the job.
It's nice to know more recognized companies are obviously asking the tech people what are the best tools available to accomplish the objective.
So Microsoft or Unix? He continued to ask me.
After some thought my resonse was, "If you want job security and choices, MCSE will give you that, but don't expect to ever get to a point where you have things under control. That's something Unix people encounter a lot more often. But one look at the stats, such as the fact that Microsoft has only 21% of the Internet web server market and shows no sign of de-throning Apache, reveals that Unix is anything but a fad. Why less Unix-based jobs? Probably because Unix admins are a happier lot and turnover in their area is nowhere near the massive burnout rate of MCSEs."
So Micky-Ds in Germany is going Unix? This is less a sign of the corporation legitimizing Unix as it is likely that a number of key executives in that region have recognized that it might be a smart move to ask the IT people what are the best tools for the job.
" Is it just me or isn't this a bit of a coop for linux."
While stories like this are still interesting, I am not sure that it is really a coop anymore. In '96 I would have been forwarding this story to everyone I knew, but Linux is all grown up now. Hell, Linux runs some of the biggest computers in the world these days. Slobbering over stories like this is a lot like getting all excited when your 11 year old kid is able to dress himself when he has already been doing it for 9 years...
While it is good news for Novell and Suse, it should be expected that an extremely adept and profit driven company like McDonalds would see that Linux IS the full meal deal.
"I am a patient boy. I wait I wait I wait. My time is water down the drain..." Fugazi
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.
McDonald's Germany Moves to SuSE Linux
and
Is the Linux Desktop Getting Heavier and Slower?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
no, wait. I guess that's called a franchise.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
... McDonald's announced their latest delicious product, McBride Meal.
Funny how McDonalds is the epitomy of bad fattening food, environmentally unsound, and a nasty big corporation, but when they're switching to Linux they're OK.
Why do people keep buying their food anyway? I have to assume that people forget how bad it us until a nice shiny advert comes along and convinces them how good it is. Those nice soggy floppy burgers. Hmm.
Get your own free personal location tracker
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?
Linux deployments on the server stopped being news years ago. If we see some movement on enterprise desktops, that'd be worthy of the /. frontpage.
McDonald's is the undisputed market leader in the fast food sector.
This is why I like slashdot. It's so educational.
Software Wars
Guess they'll be doing a complete install at every McDonald's as they love fat clients.
Omnis amans amens
Don't kwow about Europe, but MacD's USA is a big customer of Micros - they make POS terminals and the "backstore/office" hardware to support it.
I interviewed there once - they seemed to have SCO Unix and NT based systems.... atleast in the dept that I interviewed in.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
You just increased SCO's pagerank with keywords "success story"!
Tell me, were you smoking something?
That Suse will now look fresh and tasty on the box, but the actual product you get will be sort of stale, brown and wilted?
I seem to recall Michael Douglas going ballistic over this in a movie once...
McD's could give a rat's rump about the SCO case as such, but their IT department has to see The Writing on The Wall: that the vendor for the back-end software in their thousands of franchises is crashing. There's already an injunction in place in Germany against SCO making claims against Linux, and using SuSE gives it a 'local vendor' bonus there, so it's an easy choice for a proving ground.
If this works, with the Novell deal now giving them a US support base, they have a potential migration path out of a failing vendor. Whether they wait for SCO to crater or just move ahead and dare SCO to bring suit on their largest customer remains to be seen.