thelinuxlink.net

Okay have to get this off my chest.

I was at a store and wanting to get a price for a tool I wanted to buy so I grabbed somebody that worked there and he went to a terminal to find out but guess what that terminal had the infamous BSOD. I cracked up.

so he went to another one and got the price.

one thing that bugs me though is that all he did was go to a terminal and login into an as400 to get the price. I looked at the desktop and it had two programs on it. and they were both related to terminal emulation.

now here is my question if that is all they are going to have on the system why the heck are they using windows first of all - put linux on there and be done (lowes uses linux and either some form of icewm or a real stripped down kde version) with it. second why not just use a dumb terminal - but if they have to go to different boxes like a unix server or an ibm mainframe or an as400 I can understand why they want a pc.

I see this all the time the wife and I wen furniture shopping over the holidays and all there computers had windows on it but all they use it for is to go to a mainframe using terminal emulation.

to me this is the biggest waste and where linux can really shine - it would be easy to manage these desktops remotely with linux and I bet I could make it look like windows and the people would not know the difference. (especially with how stripped down the desktops were) I just don't get it.

jsusanka wrote:Okay have to get this off my chest.

I was at a store and wanting to get a price for a tool I wanted to buy so I grabbed somebody that worked there and he went to a terminal to find out but guess what that terminal had the infamous BSOD. I cracked up.

so he went to another one and got the price.

one thing that bugs me though is that all he did was go to a terminal and login into an as400 to get the price. I looked at the desktop and it had two programs on it. and they were both related to terminal emulation.

now here is my question if that is all they are going to have on the system why the heck are they using windows first of all - put linux on there and be done (lowes uses linux and either some form of icewm or a real stripped down kde version) with it. second why not just use a dumb terminal - but if they have to go to different boxes like a unix server or an ibm mainframe or an as400 I can understand why they want a pc.

I see this all the time the wife and I wen furniture shopping over the holidays and all there computers had windows on it but all they use it for is to go to a mainframe using terminal emulation.

to me this is the biggest waste and where linux can really shine - it would be easy to manage these desktops remotely with linux and I bet I could make it look like windows and the people would not know the difference. (especially with how stripped down the desktops were) I just don't get it.

I see that stuff all the time. Crazy isn't it?
Actually, I think they are all crazy for using windows anyway. For instance, I picked up a movie at Hollywood Video on sunday and noticed they were taking the orders on paper. Guess why? Yup, their windows server had crashed the day before and they were waiting for a new one to be flown in from Oregon. I told them that crap used to happen to me all the time and then I just quit using windows and all the sudden my computers just stayed running.

I was quite surprised when i worked for budgens (a convenience store) before they became a franchise ran Caldera Linux . When you booted up the tills i recognized the boot sequence including the tux logo in the corner and then a customized GUI app with all the options the store needed, i never got to see the root password

There are some retail shops that run Linux. Burlington Coat Factory runs Red Hat on their registers.

Linc wrote:I see that stuff all the time. Crazy isn't it?
Actually, I think they are all crazy for using windows anyway. For instance, I picked up a movie at Hollywood Video on sunday and noticed they were taking the orders on paper. Guess why? Yup, their windows server had crashed the day before and they were waiting for a new one to be flown in from Oregon.

Where is their redundancy? I can't imagine having to keep track of all of your videos on sheets of paper to let you know what is checked out and what is returned.

A couple of cheap whiteboxes in the back room with a synced database and a curses front end on a terminal would be fine for such a type of business wouldn't it?

You guys are forgetting the main reason why management always decides to go with the flow of business:

Cost savings.

Windows boxes are just cheaper. It's a well-known fact. You can get an e-machines for $300, or you can get a system 76 for $500. If you're buying 20 of these for your business, which one are you gonna go with? We can debate this all day long, but in the end, we just see things in a different light.

We also know enough to spend the cash on good hardware.

Management only sees numbers, and they could care less what's running on what and how. It only takes some Microsoft fanboy to give them an easy figure like the one I pointed out with the e-machines and they'll be drooling all over their desks.