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Ask Slashdot: Business Software for Linux?
Delta asks: "I am currently looking into starting a company of my own and need a whole new area of software, to mange contacts, run billing systems, so I need software like SuperOffice and Point-of-Sale systems, but I want to run Unix! Can anyone recommend such software? And perhaps a good schedule prog? It's pretty obvious that I would need stability, I cannot have the system go belly up, as any bussiness would soon follow in such a case. Another advantage would be the ability to use the databases through a web interface, or being able to carry local copies on laptops and so on. All software under this topic is of huge intrest." Can Linux be used for those generic purposes in a sales-oriented business (read: Linux as cash-register?)
foxpro is a microsoft product now.
Need adaptability? (sounds like it) Cybertronix R&D - Az
I thought I chose linux to get away from all the POS software. ;)
Both StarOffice and Applix are LAuGHABLE products. Their UIs are abysmal, they're both feature starved, and StarOffice is now owned by a company so intent on ruling the world that they don't even NOTICE the paralells to MS. Sun't idea of Open Source is worse than netscape's, and has been promoted for the sole purpose of allowing free development, while maintaining full control over the code. As much as it pains me to admit it, for the kind of work you're proposing, and NT box is the best way to go. Nothing in the world of office packages even touches MS Office in terms of features and quality (Office being one of only two "quality" MS products. The other is MS Bob.) Lotus is the way to go for contact management and e-mail, though Outlook is a close competitor, and will integrate better with MS Office. It'll take a long while for linux to catch up in these, and many other areas. Many others have said it, but I'll repeat it here... Linux is not yet a mainstream desktop operating system. Put it on your servers all day long, (I do,) but it's not the right choice for the desktop. Don't let personal preference (read "bias,") blind you to other, possibly better, choices. Trying to make linux do something it can't will only hurt its development by giving it a bad reputation.
just looking at the original request - the fella states that he needs unix cause he needs stability. Businesses (and i mostly mean small ones, but large ones too) all over the world are run on windows, or whatever else unstable crap there is, and they seem to do just fine. That's because most crashes are easily dealt with. The big question is who will be using the software? If you're going to hire regular non-unix folk off the street to handle sales, etc, you'd probably be better off looking for other solutions. Thankfully non of this will be an issue within the next few years, when things finally take off for Linux, or whatever else is going on.
http://www.quinnteam.com
There is a Quickbooks-like open-source accounting program being developed, done by joining the former xacc and several other projects, called GnuCash. Last I saw, it was still in beta, but the screenshots looked pretty slick. Apparently it has both Gnome and Motif interfaces. The homepage is www.gnucash.org, although I just tried to access it and it timed out, and couldn't find a mirror. Also, you might consider BANAL (Bk's Absolutely Not A Ledger), it uses just a basic relational database, it runs mostly from the command line, but there is a web-based interface for it and appropriate PHP setup. It's available at www.starnix.com/banal (it's copyrighted by Starnix, but the license is BSD-like - ie, free to use and modify, but no formal support). Hope this helps.
Is to stick to the topic and not be a nitpicky d*cksmoker...
I could be worth to have a look at linux-kontor http://www.linux-kontor.de/en/ I am not expert in the field and I did not experiment personally with it, but I remember that there was a review in http://www.linux-magazin.de. If people find the product interesting, I could translate the basic conclusions of the review into English.
From what I remember, since I knew somebody who worked there in recieving, their old system (which would crash many times daily) was all SunOS-based.
The cash registers are those pseudo-PC's that booted up in DOS, loaded some sort of TCP/IP stack and then telnetted to a server thus bringing up the POS program. Their SunOS app was definitely custom, so more than likely all they had to do was work out the bugs and recompile for Linux.
As I've seen mentioned in several posts, is there really a common file format for business besides dBase files? From what I've seen, from small 30 employee machine shops to several city governments to 2,000 employee textile mills, the only common database file format in use are .dbf files. The programs that read/write to these databases are typically written in FoxPro, Clipper, or custom written in C. No SQL. None of the pretty "end-user" databases for Windows, like Access. Very little Pascal or Delphi using flat files. Using existing .dbf files seems to be a requirement for any new business system.
With that said, how do you work with them with Linux? For the past 4 years, I've used CodeBase for UNIX by Sequiter Software. It is absolutely rock-solid. I think they've had a Linux version for just over 3 years now. It is a C library that is relatively easy to use, and it is fast. FoxPro programs are very fast (especially to those wanna-be "database programmers" used to Microsoft SQL who can't believe you can't do things like append 10,000 records in a second), but CodeBase programs are usually faster. I have three CodeBase systems in production use for 3+ years that append over 10 records per second to a database from a machine monitoring system. The databases are indexed (cdx, FoxPro format), and use memo fields. One of the systems commonly has over 30 people using it at a time, and one place uses it to pay employees piece-work (if your application messes-up, people don't get paid for all of their work so any sort of problem is found quickly). It makes me look good.
New systems: If you're making a from scratch system, then you might want to look at PHP/MySQL. PHP has great support for web interfaces (duh, that's what it was made to do). I also (mis)use it to do recuring basic sysadmin and database tasks with cron. PHP has support for reading .dbf files (doesn't support memo files, sigh), so you can migrate data from legacy systems into MySQL or output data back to the legacy systems. At one place, I import about 3 million rows of data each night from a FoxPro database using PHP, and I haven't had any trouble. This might be a good, gentle upgrade path for some.
The original poster mentioned "carry local copies on laptops." If your laptops run Windows and your servers run UNIX, then you're probably stuck creating a version of your databases in a .dbf format. I do this on a sales planning system using PHP, and I run a small FoxPro app on the laptops.
The original poster said, "mange contacts, run billing systems." I haven't seen anything with that goal in mind that works as well as custom software. I've done several (very simple) accounting systems with custom contact managers (and very complicated production and inventory modules...) using PHP. Each business has very different requirements for what information they need to see and to keep about a client when they, for example, look at an invoice. My business partner is a CPA, and none of the many packages I've helped him support have very nice integration with a contact manager. On one end, they have a simple free-form notes field. On the other, they have very complicated contact managers that take too many mouse clicks to move from invoice to contact info. For one company, because their accounting employees were able to get to the information they needed faster, I was able to shave almost 6 minutes off of their 12 minute call-time average by replacing Great Plains with a custom PHP program. That saved employee time, 1-800 charges, and (most importantly) our customer's time.
Home Depot is rolling out Linux to it's machines at all it's locations worldwide. Considering it's the #1 do-it-yourself home repair warehouse company, I'd say that implementing a Linux POS system for a small business is doable. How's that for a Home Depot plug for ya Syd :)
I currently AM 'doing it myself'. Internet based POS with Linux as the OS, web front end to data with PHP in between. Cost of deployment is near zero as all that is required is an internet-able computer at the store site. To the Quickbooks issue, actually this POS system being designed exports into Quickbooks for easy integration with the company's existing account solution. -Scot Campbell scot.campbell@us.pwcglobal.com -Didn't have time to create an account-
Hell, Microsoft tried it and it worked. The difference is that the future good in more likely to impelemented on Linux than the half assed stuff that wound up on windows. Besides, on Linux Microsoft can't break the opposition's applications willy nilly like they always do.
Well, the UI is simple, the spreadsheet rocks, and the word processor is just fine for 90% of the people, and that odd 10% really needs FrameMaker and/or LaTeX. It is also pretty stable, relatively fast, and simple enough to use for users. I have had good luck with Applix with a number of the less technical members of my family. And for $100, you really can't go wrong,
this guy must have forgot that his url was in his user profile... what a dildo!!
I think he wants to start his business in his lifetime. Hopefully, GNU Enterprise won't carry the same timeline that HURD has been carrying. On the other hand, GNU has released tons of neat stuff, and made my life generally a nice one. GNU tar alone makes me worship them (-z option, oh jyeeah)
ODBC is NOT going to keep you from having to have someone who has a clue about database programming around. Databases are all about structure and rules. Changing the api from ODBC to PHP to OCI isn't going to change that in the slightest.
I believe appgen's stuff has commandline interfaces available...
All an Oracle based data driven application of any kind should require is a sufficiently fat server, and applications server and a bunch of thin clients. If the app is pre-cooked like any other typical app, very little admin or development arcana should be required. You can even encapsulate data recovery inside of friendlier interfaces.
Number one on the Great Lemming Bandwagon doesn't get the job done, reliability does. That's one way in which all the Unixen have always trumped DOS and decendants. Toy PC software is not the sum total of the computing universe (fortunately).
Get a life We like Open Source, we know what M$ does, and we want to help humanity, not make money with open source. If we can find an open source solution, then we dont have to pay $1500 for some accounting software. You think that is more costeffective, better software that is free and bugs can be fixed quickly is less cost effective than software that costs $1500, takes ages to get bug fixes. You have something seriously wrong in your head if you believe that. Besides, what are you doing reading a "Pro-OpenSource" site if you dont approve of it. Go watch TV, save us all some bother. Better yet, get your finger out your arse, then go watch Barney. Sorry to all those except the person that it was intended for my angry attitude. Gaz
Overkill? How about some of the 'Accounting' packages available for the AS/400 or the S/390? Using PEOPLESOFT is overkill... That thing would be like exterminating cockroaches with a SLEDGEHAMMER! It's better to overkill than underkill
Is it just me, or do the stupid get stupider? I really shouldn't let this get me riled up like this, but... remember up until 2 days ago /. was running on 1 server! And the number of hits it managed to handle managed to bring down how many sites it linked to?
I gotta have my insta-gratification by controlling everything from my desk. If its just an overglorified ledger, I don't need it.
That was a 2? Geez, i agree with the AC..should've been a -1. Its sad when the moderators are promoting pro linux one liners. Yet some interesting Windows comments dont even get rated.
Hey, why not? It's the way I'm going to be setting up my billing system for my biz (since I call the shots)... After using stuff like Remedy all day, you'd want to write your own stuff as well.
why are you such a retard, and what kind of authority do you think someone who works for a car rental company has to dictate the proper use of computers? man, people are stupid...
I work for a Accounting Software company that develops for the Retail Computer, Hardware (ace, TrueValue), Outdoor power/Power Sports verticals. We currently run on SCO and WindowsNT/98 but have begune to strongly consider a port to linux infact it would only take about a month to complete once started. Howerver our software is considered high end. in the 5000-30000 range is anyone interested at all more info can be found at www.sunsolutions.net or email me at support@sunsolutions.net. BTW we have full inventory control, Accounts payable, Accounts Recieve, General LEdger and payroll etc... As well as some niffty EDI.
I agree; Applix is a nice, efficient product. While StarOffice takes almost a minute to load on my machine, Applix comes up instantly.
Otherwise it is a bloated piece of D#Q$#@$ HEY BILL How about outlined notes/todo ALA ECCO.
I've heard that SAP R/3 does not really work well on linux.
The database looks as though it's based on Pick. If it's anything like the database we use at work, which is also based on Pick, then BLEEEUUUGH!!!
I'd look at something that used a more familiar database, myself.
Mange contacts? Well, I think Can-it is exactly the soft you need! It keeps track of people you've eaten so far, keeps inventory of body parts in your fridge, remembers your favority ethnic food and recipes, etc. But the best part is all the ready-to-fill legal document templates that comes free with the package, in case you ever get sued for your, err, lifestyle.
A free linux version can be downloaded at their site. Be sure to read the fine prints though.
With this soft, you'll be a real shark real soon! (that's their motto anyway)
Check out these 2 apps. They might be what you're looking for. Quicken type financial software - GnuCash http://www.gnucash.org Cash register software - hmm. Can't find URL. It's out there though. Hope that helps a bit.
just to add in my $.02, Papa John's stores run off some version of Unix, I think SCO. -Just Another Anonymous Coward
theres loads of it...but since its sarcasm i wont bother to tell you where.
1) I won't be rude poiting out that it's a signature, and thus, is automatically put at the bottom of all this posts 2) What the quote means(to me) is that computers should be tools, not someone's life. People shouldn't spend all their time working on and improving them, they should use them for what they're for and move on. Speaking against peoeple who spend 24 hours a day working on their car or whatnot... same thing...
I wouldn't be so fast to say that. The potential for tie-ins to banks and financial clearinghouses plus all that goes with connectivity and electronic commerce, all that might add up to a whole lot more than just "Microsoft." We've really got to all quit thinking of Microsoft as "Big," and begin thinking of them as what "was Big, in the 20th Century." They'll be bigger. You'll see.
I hope Sun will fix them bugs, keep Star Office cheap, and continue to distribute functional freeware versions. Maybe they will.. that strategy worked for Star Division, didn'it?
You won't find a more customizeable GUI than ViewTouch. And you will find no trouble supporting all the POS peripherals. Linux POS is not only viable on Linux and UNIX, but it is far less expensive, easier to use, more reliable and more versatile than under any of the Microsoft operating systems.
I once did a small contract for someone who used ims basic on iris and then moved over to sco unix. I do beleive that this sort of stuff could be moved over to linux with the minimum of problems.
What would be cool is to mimic its menus and functionality with a web database.
Intuit will NEVER involve itself with a serious competitor to MS. NEVER NEVER NEVER. It makes too much money off its tie-ins to MS Office, and its reports export directly to Word and Excel.
The mindset at Intuit is "We'd rather go broke than use Linux." And, I for one hope they do.
You can use Oracle Applications. They are Java based and the client side runs just fine with the Blackdown appletviewer. (Unsupported by Oracle unfortunatly.) Oracle has promised a linux port of the server side early next year. Until then you are stuck with the proprietary unices.
Uhh, maybe right there in the title, where it says business software for linux?
Swords (from Sanderson) runs on AcuCobol and includes POS stuff. It's probably more suited to cash and carry stuff though. I'll post more details monday if you wanna come back. johnmc. (password is at work!)
Not any more. CompUSA is moving into SAP , which is a different system. They're ditching Unix altogether. AIX didn't give Comp the support they needed M
I've yet to find a business running Windows that's just happy as pie with it. They all want something else. Something that doesn't crash in the middle of a transaction, has to be rebooted all the time and doesn't corrupt their database when it crashes. Most smaller businesses probably don't backup often, so a corrupt database caused by a crash will invariably cause expensive loss of data, transaction reporting and even lose bids. Windows is and forever shall be a small consumer OS that should never go beyond the 10 year-old's game-room. To use it in mission critical applications is just foolhardy and expensive. Unix is the perfect solution, and with Linux Unix is affordable even for the small business while retaining all the mission critical features of the expensive Unices. If you disagree, then you've been hypnotized by the Microsoft flag and need to be deprogrammed... :)
I once worked for a company that sold cash drawers that attached to the serial port. I saw someone test one once, and all the did (in dos) was dir > com1: Which leads me to belive that all you would have to do is echo "open saysme" > /dev/ttySx
You have to have a Microtouch touch display (1024 x 768), which you can find at dozens of sources and costs about $395 new. Plug it into the X term and there you go. It should be easier than picking up the phone and buying one, but it's not. Still, that beats spending $9,000 for a high-end touchscreen, 10.4" VGA from one of the POS vendors, don'cha think?
I work for a company that just implemented a barcode printing\reading system that runs on Linux. It is by Eagle Software (i believe, I wasn't on that project.) It just dumps data to a Progress\QAD database running on HP-UX. Very stable.
While an MRP system is not what you need, the folks that made the scanning equipment could probably make a nice POS scanner for you. Great for inventory control as well.
I use Quickbooks and Quicken under Linux all the time. vmware (www.vmware.com) provides the glue that makes it work. Life is good,
use k-something..the drawing program in koffice to do it..very good for things like that..allows vector graphics etc. i do my UML stuff in it.
Not everyone has programming skills. I believe he was looking for prewritten software.
Where in his request did he ever mention linux? :) He said Unix. Soooo... AIX, etc would be an option.
psychoholic madness
Try applix; it's got standard Office stuff and they have some CRM products too.
At my place of business (a large supermarket chain), we use IBM point-of-sale systems (4693s to be exact) and they are rock solid. In the past two years we have experienced about a total of 10 minutes of downtime on a system that has been running nonstop since July 1997 (a little over 18,000 hours). The only time that the sysem went down was when a power surge fried one of the controller computers and the system had to switch to another controller computer (yes, there was a surge supressor, but that was wasn't enough...the computer was actually smoking). We have 28 IBM 4693 POS terminals connected to two IBM PS/2 model 50 (could be wrong) computers running the IBM 4690 operating system (its like DOS but 32-bit and able to multitask) and 4690 Supermarket Application for our front end. The front end system is connected to a RS/6000 running AIX which is connected to another central RS/6000. All 190 of our stores are set up the same (with some of the older store using IBM 4683 POS terminals--4680s and 4690s work fine together) and all linked to the central RS/6000. Sales, inventory management, and product ordering are all preformed automatically by the store system. Human resources managment (scheduiling and payroll) are done through the RS/6000 using a program called PeopleSoft. Sales/Income is analyzed using a program called ShrinkTrax. This example represents an enterprise operation, but the beauty of the 4680/90 system is that it is scalable. You can have as little as one to as many as 99 terminals in one store system. Your terminals can be standalone or networked to a controler computer or a master POS terminal. The only drawback is that the 4690 terminals cary a hefty pricetag: around $5,000 a piece. However, IBM does make a cheaper POS terminal called the SureOne. It is all-in-one and slightly smaller than the 4680/90 units and designed for the small/medium business.
Or if you want more hand holding, talk to I.B.M.
They will sell you a nice system written for AIX (which is IBM's flavor of UNIX). I have run POS software written for SCO Unix on a 386. As for Linux serving performance Slashdot speaks for itself.
I'm in charge of a little office in Buenos Aires (far from corporate headquarters in L.A., which uses MS) and have been using RedHat Linux 6.0, including KDE 1.1 and StarOffice 5.1, exclusively for the last month. I must admit that it has been a painful experience. As compared to MS Windows 98 and MS Office, the Linux desktop is quite slow. Worse, this version of StarOffice, while much better than 5.0, is still unstable. While the OS hasn't crashed on me once, StarOffice has done so VERY OFTEN. I'm using it for word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail, agenda, and PalmPilot V syncs. EVERY TIME I sync StarOffice crashes. At least it transfers all the info first. Beware of the comments from those using StarOffice once every few days. I use it all day long. I'm sticking with it only because I'm learning its quirks and because I love Linux, put the average user would be less efficient with my set-up than with Windows. Re-boots included. It is my opinion that Linux is still not ready for the desktop. For those of you wondering, my machine is a Pent II 400 Toshiba Satellite 4100XDVD with 64 megs in RAM. I know 64 is the minimum for a KDE and StarOffice combo and it contributes to the "slowness," (as must the _mobile_ Pentium) but Windows zips. I wish it weren't so, but it is.
/.
Just thought I'd say that
Intuit uses NT for all its servers. Intuit has a very, very strong MS influence that goes both ways; it's not likely Intuit is going to buck that right now because they don't seem to be realizing that MS is rather treacherous. They realize that they are ceding the Quicken battle to MS but they don't care as they have focused so much of their energy on their partnerships with other companies and banks, their web software (trying to capture an online market that MS doesn't own), and their business software. They seem to forget, though, that: 1) Quicken is their biggest name and to have it die or be soiled ("beaten") is going to destroy them. 2) Windows is not their only potential market 3) NT is a sucky web application platform. We will see, but I think now that they are just trying to survive and I think that if they don't embrace Linux as their only saviour, they're not going to make it. Corel and Compaq look like they're both going the Linux route. Intel perhaps also with their massive port of Linux-Merced. Intel's investing more into Linux-Merced than into Win2k-Merced. Hehehe.
killustrator is what it's called. I didn't know it could do that. I believe dia is probably your best bet for UML, or maybe (maybe) xfig. (check www.freshmeat.net for these apps). You could also use wine (www.winehq.com) (free-GPL) or vmware (check freshmeat) (costs) to run windows programs until we get some better linux apps. Check the wine app database to see if your favorite will run. also, put pressure on those app manufacturers to port to linux.
If you're looking for point of sale, touchscreen in particular, on Linux, then you can't lose by using ViewTouch. This turnkey package has a 15 year heritage. It was first written for AIX, and now runs on SCO, and Linux, of course. It's distributed, has integral authoring, is written in C++, is written to run on X terminals with touch and source is available. The URL is http://www.viewtouch.com There's a demo available at the web site.
BCF insists that GUI's are not a good idea for point of sale, an idea that essentially makes the software hard to learn and hard to use. Even if they were willing to let you use their code it would be ten years out of date the day you started using it. If you want a POS GUI and a POS system that's been in use for years, and UNIX/Linux, then take a look at ViewTouch
these types of applications used to be discussed pretty regularly on the caldera-users mailing list when I was subscribed to it. I imagine they still are. I would suggest looking at the e-mail archives of the list at http://www.caldera-systems.com/support/forums.html
However, it would be cool if Borland GPLed Paradox. It would be a shining example of how to code reliable, productive applications. And they wouldn't lose anything, because it's a dead product. It's totally different from the Win version.
If we was going to use Office 2000, then why use Linux in the first place?
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Loban Amaan Rahman ==> Anagram of ==> Aha! An Abnormal Man!
SARCASM=ON
Hi, I'm currently looking into becoming a scientist. Could any of you recommend some good science software for Linux? You know, things like measuring, testing, etc.
SARCASM=OFF
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Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
So you want a business computer with a WIDE variety of business software options including a database that you can connect with the web...Did somebody say Microsoft Windows NT? Hell no, and why? Because all you people are too proud and have the words 'open source' stuck up your ass too far to get it out. You cant see that if you just went with Microsoft instead of an open source option it will in the end be far more cost effective. If you want to start a business you have to get out of the open source mentality and get what will be the best option for business. Get what tens of thousands of companies around the world rely on to get the edge on the competitor, that being Microsoft products. You can say a lot of things about them, but not that they dont know how to do business and make business software. If you cant do that then you're just killing your company before it even gets a chance to start up and you might as well not even go any further.
Oppps I meant second largest rental company in the world.
I took an old Paradox for DOS database that had 25,000 lines of code, wiped out 3/4 of that because a web database doesn't really need any user interface coding, and had a much better app to boot.
This is a quick and reliable way to go. Trust me on this.
the operating system is there to support the applications... first find the applications you want, then picked the operating system on which those applications run. by picking the os first, you are putting the cart in front of the horse.
Applix fills this niche perfectly. MY PHB uses Applix every day, at my behest, because "I don't need Office, much too complicated.
He has a dozen different mailing groups for his Board of Directors, it handles our capital campaign very nicely. The spreadsheet really excels (pun intended) at budgeting, the multi page/consolidation features are really well implemented.
Just my opinion, but then again, I'm not a sweaty-handed college student.
That said, I'd like to point out that Pdox DOS uses relational calculus for its queries. The version of relational calculus that you are familiar with, SQL, is tuple (record) oriented. Pdox DOS uses the field-oriented relational calculus, Query by Example. I know both. Know one, know the other. QBE is a natural in the Linux market.
PdoxDOS is barely 500k of C code, screamingly fast and dead reliable. Rewrite for Linux, keep the stuff that insures referential integrity, dump the modes, make it work with ODBC so I can use PHP, and WALAA, instant web database. Then call Zenreich and Kocis to reprise what is easily the best computer book ever written >Paradox Programmer's Guide PAL by Example.
Anybody at Borland interested in recycling this wonderful workhorse? Anybody in Borland have any clue at all?
I do quit a bit of database development at work. My reasoning for ODBC is that it's not as tied to a specific vendor's database.
I'd really like to understand what made you think that I was stating that the use of PHP and ODBC somehow obliterated the need for structure and/or rules, perhaps there's a misunderstanding? I'd appreciate if you'd e-mail me. (I'd e-mail you, but you're an AC)
Some sort of database backend done through ODBC so that you ditch most of the 'but we don't have somebody who knows that database' issues, then a whole mess of php or c or whatever is neccessary for the application.
I'd be more than willing to help on the database/php side of something like this assuming it was well organized and such.
Enterprise Rent-a-car is the 2nd largest company in the world?!
Man....this must be a bad dream or something...
Werd.
If you find a product written in Acucobol (a very high number of packages in that field are written in COBOL), do remember that they have a portable bytecode system similar to what Sun later did with Java and that Acucorp has supported Linux for years. If the vendor doesn't directly support Linux, you could probably buy any version of their software and the Acucobol-GT runtime for Linux and be up and running.
One thing to consider is using Linux (or some other Unix) as a file server and Windows/DOS for the workstations. There is still a lot of software out there that runs under DOS.
We do this for our custom written POS/Accounting package and it works well. This allows our "cash registers" to run dedicated (on 386's with WFW3.11, DOS tcpip sucks) and the other workstations running 95 or 98 to access the software while still allowing the workstations to run Office, etc.
Of course, the workstations crash periodically, but the servers run forever (or until you shut them down). In general DOS and Windows (less so) will run just fine if they are only running one app and it works right. We only require the "cash registers" and workstations to be up maybe 8-10 hours a day, so it works fine; a crash/lock up only causes minor inconviences.
You just wish your ID was as low as mine! I used to be proud to have such a low id, but not so much now. Slashdot most
How is having a staff of DBAs & dedicated servers or the redunancy you speak of any different than trying to run on WinNT? You don't want to run a business on questionable hardware anyway and you always want to make sure that you are backing up your data. That has nothing to do with linux. Burington may have already had a lot of their software written for a Unix platform (I seem to recall that they had their store servers on Solaris), so it wouldn't be too terriblly hard to port.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
ya, one of the beauties of linux is its ability to run on Piece Of Shit (POS) machines.
;)
-l
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... In Safeway we use a program called SuperSked which once you have it up and configured properly does in fact write do scheduling pretty well.
If you are looking to run it on linux I am not sure if there is a linux native version but the version we use runs on SCO OpenServer so the ibcs (sp??) module *MAY* work. I know the DOS version of SuperSked needs one of them keys that attach to your parallel port, but, as for the UNIX version I am not sure if a key that is used. There once was a message up on the console about a "Liscense Daemon" being restarted so that may be used instead of the parallel port key.
Now for the POS system: There was a review of a POS system in the Linux Journal a while back ( I think this year) called LinuxPOS which is mentioned in an earlier comment with URL.
I wrote my own accounting system with a Python front-end and a Postgresql backend. It was surprisingly easy to do.
When I get some time, I'm gonna clean it up and GPL it. Right now, it's just a bunch of loose scripts custom-tailored to my own set of accounts.
I'd like to graft an emacs front-end onto it too.
Cheers,
- Jim
Probably the top site for information on business applications for Linux is:
http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/finances.ht ml
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Well, this is along the same lines I suppose:
I am a consultant/contractor and I'm constantly sending out proposals and other documents that require Gantt charts. What software is available for me to do this with? Currently I've been manually writing them and then drawing them up on the gimp. There's gotta be a better way.
"Whatever can go wrong, will." --Finagle's Law
Parasoft demoed their Magnate POS application and it looked very good and complete. It is a web server that allows an instant e-commerce solution too. The old url is still available at http://www.parasoft.com/products/magnate/ , but the new site format dosen't mention the product as far as I could find. They have clients worldwide using magnate, so surely they still sell it.
It had support for cash drawers, and most common barcode scanners, etc... IIRC.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Eljay General Accounting System Home Page at http://members.iweb.net.au/~steveoc/ERP/ is another GPL work in progress.
"Has anyone used this product?"
And, until that can be answered "Yes" by
an accounting department of a PUBLIC corp.,
it doesn't mean much.
Publicly traded corporations are fairly limited
in what accounting systems they may use. (This
is the USA only, Delaware Corps only).
I'd really like to know what RHAT uses for Accounting and Finance software.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
its to bad inuit has no backbone to port thier apps to linux. sad..
That sounds so cool! I'm going to go download a demo of that touch screen monitor right now! How do I get it out of the computer so I can test it out? Or does it just turn my existing monitor into a touch screen for a limited time?
:P
(It's friday!)
One Big problem I have had with PC POS was not having enought serial ports. Consider all the serial devices you need to hook up:
Mouse (if it's not PS/2 Bus)
UPS
Modem (if it's not internal)
CashDrawer
BarCoder
CardStripReader (if it's not built into the keyboard)
SCO had a problem about sharing IRQs so just adding a extra COM board was little help.
When everything goes USB, POS PC's will be easier to manage.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
But they already have programmers who know the Mac, and they still almost shut that division down to move those customers to Quicken.com. It would be nuts to spend the resources to port it to Linux, which has less of a desktop share, when they're grappling with all those other problems that I mentioned previously. I'm talking Quicken here, not QuickBooks or their other small business products, which they don't make for the Mac anymore.
As far as Intuit's products go, TurboTax is pretty vital to me, and potential integration issues with it are the only reason why I might end up not going with Money 2K instead of Quicken 2K. As to the biz products, I don't use them myself (although I do have first-hand experience with the nightmare that is PeachTree), but my accounting babe seems to be satisfied with QuickBooks instead of the competition.
BTW, the thing that irked me about the post to which I replied was attributing Quicken's absence of Linux products to some lack of backbone. That's ludicrous.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
maybe. I enjoy DBM Files in perl. Easy to set up, easy to use, and easy to create a web interface.
-Z
I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.
In my company, we use Lotus Notes R5 for everything except accounting. The server is coming for linux (you can get the beta now), already runs a some other *nix and works great at DB to Web conversion. Calandaring and Scheduling is build right in as well as many custom DB templates for document management and other things. And above all that, you get email, nntp, ldap, etc... If you know how to create a spreadsheet, you can program notes. Simple @functions do most of the programming issues. Lotus Script allows some lower level access to the systems, but is rarely needed. Java and Javascript as well as server side applets are fully supported and integrated in to the dev IDE. The DB is only a flat file, but it can access just about any ODBC DB out there. Even though I run my server on NT (dont know linux yet), I havn't had a crash yet (2 years). The client is a different story, but you only need that for development. As for accounting? We use peachtree. I'm the tech guy so I don't get much involved with that.
afaik it's oriented towards web transactions etc but i can't see any reason (barring a complete refusal on your part to do any software tinking) that it couldn't be used in conjunction with a vanilla magnetic card reader to make a 'real' POS machine.
----
-- in china, chinese food is just called food.
When did PICK get ported to linux? When I was with storehouse, the point of sale solution we went with was coded in PICKBASIC running on HPUX. If I remember correctly, It was called Universe/Unidata?
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Heheheh. I was wo0rking on POS (point of sale definition) for Storehouse Furniture when I was sysadmin there. We used to joke that our current POS was a POS ;)
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
I'm writing a web based personal finance app which runs on my Linux box. It currently uses Oracle and the ArsDigita toolkit as its backend. The only bit working so far is some of the ledger functionality, but you're welcome to take a look and send me feedback. The data model is actually better than Quicken (I support currencies and double entry bookkeeping), so it should be possible to adapt it for small businesses if I ever get it finished.
Alexium - open source software and articles for web publishers
Errr...the request was for *UNIX* solutions. Access is not a Unix solution. (But I agree...Access is easy for writing databases, but there is currently no equivalent on Unix)
My journal has hot
Star Office is great for generic office package. Its bloated, its slow, but it has MS Office compatibility which is a must in today's business world.
...and you're in business. Thats what most companies, including Burlington Coat Factory, which has a Linux-based solution, have done.
As for databasing, you should probably write your own, if at all possible. The FSF has some great database routines for C programs. Couple that with a MySQL setup on the server
Java or Perl and HTML might not be bad for a Web-based intranet client. However, IMHO, Web- based clients generally aren't robust enough due to security and other limitations...
Lets not forget that FoxPro runs on SCO and (I think) AIX. And you can get a stripped-down version of SCO for free....
My journal has hot
Home Depot is currently looking to replace their stations with linux instead of Windows due to ease of management and remote administration (there was an article in "Network World" a couple of months ago).
That's valuable information and all, but it makes me wonder, given the fact that these companies all have websites (who doesn't), if Delta (the originator of the Ask Slashdot article) couldn't have just done a web search and found this stuff without beating on slashdot with this request.
Sounds a bit like if, given an assignment in school, you ask your prof/teacher for relevent references instead of just spending the 30 minutes to check your library index for an answer.
OK, a slightly different idea of how this could be done, integrating all-in-one.
The company I work for is a reseller for SalesLogix, a sales automation tool.
It's used to track contacts, accounts and oppurtunities for sales, includes a reporting tool (either Crystal or IQ Reports).
The database uses either Oracle, MS-SQL or Interbase, so a Linux Oracle database is possible, but you do need a Win9x/NT to run actual server.
It has features built in to syncronise changes with remote sites (other stores) and remote users (salesman on the road with laptops).
As i said, all the client software is for Win9x/NT, but I'm sure if a lot of people want a Linux version, they'll look into it.
There is also a WWW interface for it, but this needs MS-IIS and ASP to run.
As for the POS side, it can be completly changed and new screens/code can be written for it, so it shouldn't be much to do that.
Ah well, just my 0.02 euros.
KevF
-- Do You Drive A Ford, Or Want To ? All Ford, All The Time - FordTalk
What I am looking for is a spreadsheet that has most capabilities and functionalities of Excel. Last time I checked StarCalc it was much less feature rich than Excel. One thing that I like in Excel is the DataAnalysis add-on pack (Inludes things like automized regession analysis, etc) Sure, StartCalc has some statiscal functions, but still Excel is better. Simple and powerful and easy to use(after you take a short look at its manual). Second, I want my Access. My definition of Access is a "Simple, Powerful, and EASY to use RDBS". If you don't need dozens of people connecting to the same data base, and you just want to be able to design it in a few minutes with automated reoprts , etc, Access is NICE. Alghouth MS OSes do suck, their other applications are usually good stuff (MS Office, IE, VC++..)
SAP R/3 has a Linux version. Is that overkill? That's a large company that supports Linux as a back-end OS.
I work at Home Depot. The sale registers may be Linux-based, but the returns registers use Win95! And yes, I have seen them crash, though not as much as you might expect from 15 hours of continuous use.
Shane
I've been trying to push Linux at POS here for a while. The problem is we do a number of things in weird ways, and we definitely wanted to keep our screens a lot like the existing NT app. The linux POS systems I've seen tend not to be very customizable as far as UI goes. So we chose a very extensible system that's win32 only.
However, the big problem with Linux at POS is devices. Printers, 2x20 displays, flatbed scanners, handheld scanners, MSRs, pinpads, bizarre keyboards in odd ports. If you're pushing a free OS it doesn't make a lot of sense to have to buy all new hardware with everything USB (not that Linux supports that too well) to make it work.
It will take the big hardware vendors, IBM, NCR and Fujitsu/ICL to get behind Linux before Linux at POS becomes viable. Right now the number one OS shipped with POS hardware is still DOS. Win9x/NT/CE are distant 2nd-4th.
Rupert
--
E_NOSIG
http://www.appgen.com
My CPA sent this to me a few months ago and hi-lighted the Linux plug. Seems that they are providing what you are looking for.
Has anyone used this product?
ADP DOES NOT know how to design programs. I've used PCPers and HRizon. Blah!
I'd suggest again that you look at Appgen.
http://www.appgen.com
I don't believe Home Depot is using Linux yet... read the article here. The article says "pilot-testing is being done this summer."
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
Any Microfocus Cobol application will run on Linux...Just use the SCO runtime. I think MF has a Linux runtime now, but I have several systems running accounting packages with the SCO runtime since 1997. It works great.....
There is a reason why there are so many narrowly focused applications. It's the way this software works. You can't take a Hotel management application and use it in a supermarket... Domain specific knowledge is the value these packages offer.
So no, there is not "one single integrated solution for all of them". Not on Linux, AIX, Windows or a Palmpilot.
And what business software does MS produce? I don't know of any MS package that does accounting, stock control, POS.
So truly, MS doesn't know how to write business software. Last I looked they ran their business on AS/400. and jotted down sales numbers on little scrap of papers (DOJ trial)
Do you really really think that MS accountants "balance the books" in Access?
You can get StarOffice from Sun. I've used it on Linux and Solaris and it does what you need an office suite to do -- for free, since you only have to pay if you bundle it or integrate it with something you sell.
Caveat: I work at Sun, so if you believe in conspiracy theories and so forth, perhaps you should get a second opinion.
ON the other hand, there are probably a faily large pile of people out there running small businesses on the web, where the most commonly encountered activities are selling/supporting a product or service that they wish to ship themselves.
The most common tasks associated with that are contact management, accounting, correspondence, POS, perhaps label making and package tracking. If it's strictly a web based business, you can drop the POS, although the author of this "Ask
I myself would like to be able to accomplish all these tasks using Linux, but right now have to copy/paste from a bunch of Windows apps. So, who is going to get it right first with a single, well integrated application? Will it be someone who develops for Linux, or someone who develops for Windows?
For more information, visit the project website at http://www.webaccountant.org/.
There's currently a wide gap in the realm of open-source web-based accounting software, and it's just waiting to be filled. I'm sure small business will benefit from the products that emerge as a result.
Claiming that Linux is a waste of money while MacOS is not is ludicrous. The fact is, like it or not, Linux is a presence in more businesses than MacOS is, whether we're talking about desktop or server use. To marginalize this OS on _business_software_, particularly for small to medium sized businesses, is a dangerous move. Like it or not, for that segment of the market, MacOS is a _much_ riskier proposition with a _much_ bleaker outlook than Linux.
That said, I've never been a big fan of Intuit's products anyway. I'd much rather see Computer Associates port their low-mid end packages (like Simply Accounting) over. I'd also love to see Canadian tax-prep software on Linux as well... Oooh. I think I smell an open source project coming on...
In my experience, most electronic cash drawers use a simple serial interface and open in command to something like 07h being sent. No real need for special devices here.
I use the MySQL database, with time card and invoicing software written in C (using MyC). Works great, and it's a lot faster than perl :-P
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
"Anybody at Borland interested in recycling this wonderful workhorse? Anybody in Borland have any clue at all?" Maybe they do. Didn't they just re-release turbo c++? I would love to have some of my bygone dos programs re-released or better yet GPL'ed so that they could be updated. I could trade lotus megellan for the windows explorer any day!.
War is necrophilia.
Wal-Mart, the most technologically advanced (or at least that's what they keep telling us) retailer on the face of the planet, uses *NIX on all of it's systems, including POS and inventory and accounting. There are 2 NT boxes in the back office...but i don't know what they use them for, nor do i particularly care. So, yeah, the software *is* out there...someone has tread this path before, so how difficult can it be to follow? ;)
I work at compusa as a cashier (please no comments about that) and they use unix terminals called televideos that are hooked up to a server in the back. It is a proprietary system however. Both the cash register and register tape printer are controlled through this.
Actually, I'm halfway through writing a distributed Point of sale system. This includes Linux boxes running on comodity x86s and Java Database Servers. This system includes report management, timeclocks and asset management. It does contain some NDA stuff. This is however for another client and is modular. It can easily be replaced with your own proprietary modules.
I was using the acronym pos in a different way =p ...crud"
"piece of
Apologies for a twisted sense of humour...
Sorry about that...
Well, depending on _what_ pos, you might want to look into windows Seriously, all you need to do is take a database system and spend a little while coding a frontend. Basically, it needs to input barcode, output price, amt left, etc., sum prices, and print a receipt. But you probably already knew that...
My wife works in retail management and had a funny experience the other day. A couple of guys came in trying to hawk their Linux-based cash-register systems (she works for Bath and Body Works) and started to tell her how much more stable and robust they were than the existing Windows-based systems.
She said they just about fell over when they found out that not only did this dumb retail bimbo know about Linux, but that she knew a lot of specifics about the advantages of the Linux OS...
My local Home Depot uses a Win95-based system. Believe me, I see it almost every time I shop there...when they have to power-off and reboot the registers. I'd say 3 of the last 10 times I've been there I had to wait until it booted back up to get checked out.
Lets hear it for StarOffice.
Go Sun!
-awc
The store I work at uses OS/2 for their point of sale systems. It actually works fairly nice, I'm not sure what applications, etc it uses.
Just a note.
kaniff -- Ralph Hart Jr
The 07h is fairly common for opening registers. I once learned the hard way not to send a 07h via parallel to a cash register when it's piggybacked through an external Iomega Zip drive... :>
If you're curious, try it, but don't put any valuable information on the disk
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
Everyone here seems to classify all MS products as unreliable just because windows 95/98 is, but you always forget NT. Thousands of companies like Boeing and parts of GM use is everyday and obviously find it very reliable.
There is one that I know of in Ireland writing POS stuff (for supermarkets) under SCO - Merit Solutions so it can be done. They're working on some Linux stuff as well.
-- johnmc.
Better than cheap.
Sun might make it free and opensource it
Now that would be awesome..a good office application opensource
You have indicated that you want something robust
so this is a mission critical application.
Chewing gum, baling wire, and a few scripts
won't cut it.
I've done a POS before and also have a CC
authorization product on the market.
There are many factors. How many POS stations
per location? What kind of wanding device have
you picked out? How many transactions per day?
How many locations?
You will need high availability clients that
can shift to multiple servers if one or more
servers go down, database on RAID... I see
lots of testing in your future if you wish to
insure a high-availability system.
A different concept than Flat-Tables like SQL and Oracle use, check out http://www.picksys.com. They were one of(if not THE) first commercial DataBases available on Linux. There's a newer, more superior product called jBASE(http://www.jbase.com) that works similarly. The programming language is a REALLY easy, fast, BASIC language, and there are thousands of business that use this technology(Ever heard of FTD? Sony? NEC? They all use MultiValue Databases at the core of their business).
There's even an open-source MVDBMS in development right now called MaVerick(http://www.maverick-dbms.org).
SpamapS -- Undernet #Linuxhelp
Have you considered using PHP to do your webinterface? It is a reletively easy language to set up and program, plus it can interface with sequel databases to manage things like inventory, contact lists, or just about anything else. Any c++ programmer can learn it pretty quickly, as the syntax for php is almost exactly the same as c++. You can get some quite advanced systems working with php. I once created an article database that links to articles were automagically generated on the appropriate pages. I also once wrote an online ordering service using php.
;-)
Do you know anyone know even uses half the features in MS Word? It is very expensive and it is also very complicated to learn and use.
I did some work for Eddie Bauer a while back and I believe they're using an AIX system developed by IBM and some third parties.
It's probably costly but IBM undoubtedly has a generic system that could be adapted. I know they sell the source (Eddie Bauer always insisted on buying source, they're competent enough to know not to depend on IBM for quick fixes), but it's probably fairly expensive. You'd have to adapt it to Linux but it probably wouldn't be that big of a deal.
If your scale is small though you probably would have trouble affording it. Plus there's the whole idea of giving money to IBM...
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
I know a lot of people who use accounting software such as quickbooks on windows. It would be great to see software like that out for linux. I'm sure there would be demand out there.
-- Moondog
I have recently created a complete inventory system for an account we had, and opted to go with a web interface. PHP3 on Apache is god. Just install apache on the box, create a little script-o-matic connected to a database, and walla you have all the connectivity you will ever want!
I will be working on a custome accounting system that will have POS and the like addons to it. I am starting a company that will be probviding solution in hawaii. I have seen no realy linux solutions out there so it comming.
let me know if you are willing to help.
Thanks PDG
bradg@ilhawaii.net
For now I'm writing software for Samsung ECRs for :)
Windoze. This doesn't look like a quite easy thing, but I'm trying to use only pure C and WinAPI functions. So I guess that would be easy
to port that for Linux, if someone will be interested in.
Anyway, my company is still stuck with windoze on
machine connected to ECR and I'm gonna change that
Alex Makarov (des)
Linux needs more than just cash register tools to be a functional business system It's great as a scientific platform, but it's positively hair-raising as a biz platform. We've had a paralle Linux network running in our offices for about a year (which we use for e-mail), but it's a pretty scary system for keeping valuable biz data. Existing Linux biz software has lots of ODBC and CORBA and ORACLE, but that stuff is hugely impractical for small businesses. It won't link to older systems. It needs specialized DBA technicians and lots of dedicated servers. It often won't read or write DBF files, or if it does, it won't read the indexes. Linux blows up the whole enterprise if the hardware flakes out (like a shaky power supply will take out the hard-drives - with _NO_ chance of data recovery. Therefore, you must invest heavily in redundancy and back-up systems. The Burlington Coat Factory guys most likely had to write their own software (not cheap). We're still investigating the expansion of our Linux experiment, and we're having some success, but it requires writing a lot of very complicated software. And it can't be Linux-only software; it must be DOS and Windows compatible. This means it must be a scripted or run-time implementation so the same scripts can be run on any platform. The data format? Is there any other choice for small business than DBF?
You might want to have a look at this. Last time
I tried it it had a calender and mail reader. As far as I can remember it also has a contacts list. There is also a a template you can use to add features to it.
ftp://ftp.obsidian.co.za/ocs/
regards
Izak
I work for http://www.affordablecomputers.com and we just recently purchased a Linux business application which offers accounting, inventory etc. Kinda pricy though at $25,000 but it is a really big scalable package. If this is more than what you wanted to spend and more scalable than what you wanted there is a nice accounting package someone was making that goes for around $500.00. Just search the web and you will bump into it, I did.
"With enough memory and hard drive space, anything in life is possible!"
They are using linux-based cash registers. The UI looks like curses-based stuff, pretty simple and functional.Go check it up.
The company is Information Management Systems, Inc.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
I'm no Java fan, but from where we've seen so far J-Commerce's JStore series may be just what you need. Check it out at:
http://www.j-commerce.com
It has a complete POS setup that expands from mom and pop stores to good-sized chains. Best of all, it's got great interoperability, with ODBC and JDBC support, with other systems.
Steven, Senior Technology Editor, Sm@rt Reseller
Well then I can set up a mailing list and we can get a thread going on this if ya want. You can figure out how to email me ;)
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Come on. A little more development work me things.
But since Linux is used primarily for servers and is getting more popular for the desktop as well, you'd think someone would have a mind to develop and market an app which can seamlessly take data from the e-commerce side of a site, verify a cybercash deposit, into order fulfillment, over to write correspondence, UPS shipping labels, then add in a UPS functionality that allows you to feed the data back to the site so that customers can track thier package. This currently requires too much damn copy/paste using windows apps or re-entry of data to be fun. I haven't learned of any Linux apps which do all these functions and sorry if I'm ruffling feathers here, but I'm not going to switch back and forth between OSs to accomplish minor tasks related to completing the same job. The minumum shared data is of course, the customer demographic.
Is there even an accounting program out that just includes UPS label making as an integrated function?
Someone will slap me down here, either for asking for too much, not being a programmer, or expecting too little. I don't see a viable solution on the horizon for such a product, but I'd pay as much as $600 for it if it did all that. I wouldn't pay what the large companies want, which is in excess of $2500, plus a % of sales.
At Linux Expo, I talked to a company called Proven Software, Inc that sells/supports an accounting package called Proven CHOICE, I believe it has POS capabilities too. Their web site is http://www.provenacct.com
We need the following:
Probably a few other things, too, but I'm sure you'll think of them and give suggestions as see fit.
Accounting software: Needs Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, needs to be able to figure out who owes what and what is owed to who; print capability would be nice. Sounds like it shouldn't be too hard, but this is a pretty simle view; I probably left a whole bunch of stuff out.
You might want to integrate time tracking and sales commissions into this, but then it gets more complicated. Do things the Unix way: Write a program that does one thing and does it right.
Contact Management: What you do with this depends on how you want to manage your contacts. You'll probably want company-wide read access with a more tightly controlled edit access.
Cash Register: We need a mini-HOWTO on how to implement
Point-of-Sale system: This is probably going to be the biggest pain. It needs to know a lot of things. Info about the inventory (How many blue guitars do we have in stock?), the price list, the tax rates in each area where you operate. Plus, depending on the business, you might want it to work with touch screens. (Then again, you might not need that.)
-Ender
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
check around for articles on slashdot and other sites about Burlington Coat Factory rolling out linux to all POS machines in the company. If i remember right, at the time it was the largest mainstream coporate rollout of linux into production environments. Course, as usual, i could be wrong. the point is that it has been done. i remember seeing at ALE last year a company that has CC proccesing software (similar to ICVerify) for that particular purpose. Back to burlington, I think they wrote thier own package though. It wouldnt be too hard to write something like this in php3 or whatnot and have it private network webenabled. If you do that, you have a host of contact management web apps to read and borrow code from or get ideas from. Just a few ideas.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Check out AppGen. Costs some $$$ but is generally a well built application. Has modules for General Ledger, Accounts Recievable, Billing, etc. Basically any business function needed. And it runs on Linux!
W. Sandman III
I think #2 lists almost everything mentioned thus far and includes the simple things up to the big boys with lots of modules. It needs more work, as AppGen gets no description while others get more reasonable detail.
This is only vaporware at the moment, but we're duscussing business software and the needs around it on our mailing list. If you're interested in that topic, please join us.
There is a company from Canada that wrote a Point of sale system in tcl/tk. The company is called Linux Canada Inc. at http://www.linuxcanada.com.
There is is another company that did the same thing but I have not been able to find the for about 1 year.
Good Luck
Bryan
Get a life get Linux
As for the POS software you're looking for, there are quite a few options available.
Samco has an extensive offering of business accounting applications that work with Linux, including POS. Check out the screenshots of their POS module. J.S. Software provides accounting and POS software, and they support Linux. LinuxPOS from Linux Canada is also available.
Funny how all three of these companies are Canadian. Don't worry about accounting tax differences too much, though--Canadian companies (have to) create software with other countries' tax laws in mind.