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Linux to be used in large retail operation
desertfool writes " A good article is running about Burlington's switch to Linux. " Of course, ComputerWorld does call Linux a "shareware" OS, but hey-at least retailors are beginning to see the value of Linux.
Didn't another clothing retailer, "Big and Tall",
do the same a few months back?
Burlington Coat Factory: More than great coats!
Who would've thought a coat factory would use a tux to run the business?
They'll believe you, man! And they'll trumpet it from this houetops. And then we'll all be very sorry. But oh, lordy, it's a fine joke, innit . . . I wish, I wish, I wish . . .
My friend whom I graduated college with is a UNIX/Linux sysadmin at Burlington Coat Factory...I told him, "dude, you must be in Linux Heaven right about now....and with your upper management's blessing....It just doesn't get any better than this....Meanwhile, can you say, 'Micro$oft break up'???? sure you can...."
Can you say "I don't have to download a 70+ friggen MB NT $ervice Pack 4???" or "I don't have to install 70MB worth of extra bugs????"
HELL YES!!!!
Those penguins sure are raising HELL!!!:-)
Enuff said
i8086/Fishhead
I think I have seen somewhere a Linux POS project. Can anybody point me to it?
I am thinking about putting Linux POS together for my restaurant. I would need pointers to good touchscreens, card-readers, credit card processing software, and small printers (for receipts).
I think I should post it to the Ask Slashdot...
Let's continue to build on our success. Linux users, please help Linux win this OS Survey. Don't delay; Do it today! Linux is now ranked number 2 in the survey, and moving up fast. Windows is currently ranked number one.
I can't so who, but a large funiture retailer/distributer in the SouthEast US will be going to a Linux POS system in the near future..
All I can say is I take pride in the fact that I think I was the first person to ever tell the VP of MIS at this Company about Linux.. Back then he was on the NT bandwagon * was singing the virtues of NT so i'm glad to say he is coming around..I'll report it to slashdot when I'm told its official.(My father works at this company & can't wait till he can have a Linux Desktop)
> 70MB for Service Pack 4??
Yup. It's Star Office 5.0
:)
Hello system admins: this is an "opportunity".
Go for it.
There was an article in the New York Times a few months ago about how Burger King was moving to an NT system. Until they get that service pack, their sign says "Over -99 billion served"...
> "If we had Linux, would we not have to put up with this bullshit?"
Did you tell him that "this bullshit" was "no worse than having a leg chewed off"?
If he's not computer savvy, if non-geeks are starting to ask that question, then NT is in a heap of trouble, and sooner than I thought.
or maybe a wincrap crash corrupted some invoice or check printing program's database??
A better solution, instead of running LLC everywhere (which is non-routable) is to put some gateways in which talk LLC to the M/F, but all client session that talk to the gateway use IP. There are lots of Unix/OS2/Netware/NT options for this (obviously you want the former).
Did anyone notice the article at the end of the story in ComputerWorld (P. 97 print ed.) that noted 64% of 154 "IT managers" were not familiar with Linux at all? I mean, I understand ComptuerWorld should be called WintelWorld but come on, where do people find such large rocks to crawl under??
Where my wife works they installed a 13 terminal POS system tied to another system for inventory all of which runs on an NT4 server. The 'thin' terminals are special purpose IBM registers (IIRC).
The inventory system is based on Access DB, I guess the front end is VB. Both products are targeted at restaurant/food service organizations.
They had previously used an NCR system.
My wife experienced numerous bugs and problems, but both systems were newly developed and she had direct access to developers to get problems resolved. They did make good use of pcAnywhere to help fix and manage issues without charging for onsite support.
If similar software existed for Linux it would have been an easy sell.
jmr
The registers and server are all NT4. The registers are IBM running a 133mhz cyrix and the servers are dual pentiums with several gigs of disk space and 500 megs of ram. It's amazing that such high end servers are needed to run less that a dozen registers.
This is great news, but momentum is needed.
Right now, most linux programmers work on the
interesting/fun stuff, but there is a need to
help businesses choose not-MS. In the desktop
arena, there are people working on office-like
stuff; but in the server arena, its mostly
still horizontal applications.
If Linux were not an all-or-nothing choice, but
could interconnect with proprietary EDI systems
that would be yet another selling point. I'm
guessing a bit here 'cos I work in telecoms not
retail/wholesale but I think this would be a
big win. (accountancy/hr/inventory systems are
other things I'd guess they want - does
Oracle Financials run on Linux?)
AFAIK there is an XML EDI spec that may provide
something to work with, but someone who works in
that area (like say, someone at Burlington?)
should chip in and say what is really needed.
Not surprising really. In my experience, 64% of "IT managers" are not familiar with *computers*, by any sensible definition of the word "familiar".
I'd really love to get into converting this company I work at (tres large, if you know what I mean :)). Two of the major applications we use are Notes and IBM Personal Communications for the mainframe access.
I noticed Notes had some fairly positive entries in winehq.com's app list. But on the other, under tn3270 things work, but not everything. What we use is a protocol called something like "IBM 802.2 LLC2". Is there anything like this in Linux? Any other pointers?
Oh, thought of another, we use a good number of Lexmark print boxes hooked up to printers. Is there any info on what protocol they use, or some program to set them up, talk to them? Slowly we're switching to JetDirect, so hopefully once HP gets on the ball we can use at least those from a Linux server.
Let's check the I-Think-He-Was-Joking-O-Meter: / ] FF
00 [..............,..............
Looks like we have a wie-nner!
Spend the money on the hardware.
Finally an article which mentions the outrageous
cost of deploying Windows NT due to its
unreasonable $500/CPU license. Congrats to the
IT people at Burlington Coat Factory for pointing
out the obvious monopolistic price gauging which
Microsoft claims doesn't exist.
So Linux is shareware?! Damn, I'd better register
this copy before it expires! (In case you can't
tell I'm being sarcastic.)
...which gives me an idea for this coming April
Fools:
What's say we sprea start a rumor
that all "unregistered copies of Linux will
expire on April 2nd, 1999" -- that should confuse
the pseudo-techie journalists out there to some
degree and be very amusing.
Just a joke kids. I'm a Linux zealot, but not
much of an advocacy and marketing zealot.
Also check out www.linuxgeneralstore.com. I know Joe has been working on one.
And my girlfriend is one of them.
Regards, Jochen
Regards, Geewiz
>if NT systems are commonly used in POS systems?
It probably depends how you decode the acronym "POS"...
For years I have bought my stuff from them. All of my coats, My business wear, And the suit I got married in. They have always had good prices, good service and it warms my heart to see that they have the good sense to go with the operating system that seriously out performs NT.
--First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
Depending on the age of the lexmark boxes they should support lpr. The HP ones definetly do (as long as you get the 'multiprotocol' ones).
Palin...
I worked at BCFW in 1994. Quite an interesting shop. I was only a graveyard-shift MIS UNIX op (a position for which I was ridiculously overqualified :) so I got bored and left quickly. But they sure do have some toys there. They've got what I think is the world's largest installation of Sequent Dynix/PTX servers, with something like 20 Pentium CPU's each, handling a terabyte or so of data warehouse. This is all fed through SQL and TUXedo (another Penguin!) running on a couple dozen Sparcs. The stores had those Sparc-controlled terminals and POS beasties. It used to be all linked together via VSAT dishes and some kind of satellite network, which meant a good-sized thunderstorm could disrupt all the stores in a region. :)
:)
I'm glad to see they've done this - it's really neat. Not that I'd go back and work there again because of it, mind you.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
You bet! The company is Linux Canada, Inc. and their web page is www.linuxcanada.com.
These guys are the COOLEST to work with.
----- "Kahn, I'm laughing at your superior intellect..."
The motorcycle shop I worked in used SCO for the
main server, and Pentiums with '95 for the POS
terminals. This was because the microfiche database
was totally scanned in so we could just pick
the part from a picture. Good for, um, less
mechanically inclined customers who could just
point at the picture and grunt.
Our competition just went to an IBM RS/6000
with dumb terminals this summer. I had some
serious hardware envy.
Can anyone confirm or deny that IKEA Canada uses Linux as the server for their store inventory/POS system? I've heard that they do.
Be smart and work to create. Don't ride on the backs of others.
Chapters bookstores in Canada are using QNX for salesdroid book lookups and POS. They have terminals around the stores for the droids to key things into, with a nice text-based captive user interface.
:)
:)
Plenty of power, plus you get QNX reliability and support.
For my mission-critical system, I'd probably take QNX over Linux too.
And of course, anything is better than NT. Well, maybe not Win95.
Wow... An impressive the amount of positive
responses here. Thanks for the support.
I'm one of the project managers heading up this project at BCFW. If you want to make queries of
any sort you can forward them to me at:
Matt.Fahrner@COAT.COM
and I'll make sure they get to the right people.
Thanks again,
Matt Fahrner
Manager of Networking
Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse
'... DNA Plant Technologies Corp., ... information systems manager Rob Narberes. ... "I would rather choose to have my leg bitten off than to buy NT," Narberes said. ...'
if NT systems are commonly used in POS systems? I would think not - they seem to be usually old SCO or Sun, or even IBM midrange stuff.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
It would be great if we could gather data from all of the willing commercial sites that deploy Linux. I would love to see a side by side comparison of Linux and NT as they are deployed in these enterprises. If this has already been done, let me know, if not, we should do it.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
I'd be more than happy/willing to take more than one of those old/outdated sparcs off of his hands =]. Who do I get in touch with?
--e/C
cfinlay Little Rock, AR
After I (and apparently many others) pointed out the error of refering to Linux as "Shareware", David Orenstein, the author of the story, sent me this e-mail...
;)
> Oh, no problem. The feedback I have received
> has been very helpful, so I welcome it.
> We are actually planning to run a correction
> that sets the record straight.
> Linux is NOT shareware and we won't refer to
> it as such again.
...sounds good to me
It's my understanding that there are already a few retail chains using Linux for POS terminals. It makes sense, with that many machines to equip the savings must be intense. I love the quote from the Article:
Linux is free and it runs like the wind.
How about:
NT is expensive and it blows like the wind.
-- -- I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.
Here in the UK, all our NatWest cash machines (the bank I'm with) use NT
and I've seen a couple of blue screens. I'm pretty sure the cash
register at Oddbin's (grog shop) was using NT too .
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
We currently support some 1500 stores running Linux. Thats stores, not PCs. There are various reasons for choosing Linux, the two main ones being reliability and maintainability. Price comes third.
There is an open source project to develop retail software. Check it out at:t ml
http://members.iweb.net.au/~steveoc/gtk_pizza.h
In a world that is Free and Open, who needs Windows and Gates?