Aside from Linux running on NASA hardware, phones and consoles. Does it run on ATM machines, PDAs and point of sale monitors?

I ask this because I’ve seen Windows being used in airport terminals and really old versions being used for cash machines as well. The crowdstrike problem made this more prevalent by seeing “non end user computers” using the OS.

Does Linux fill this niche as well do you know? I don’t recall hearing any big name embedded distro used for those sorts of machines. Maybe Alpine Linux or NetBSD?

Thank you in advance for your input!

8 points

The digital sign the local university has is powered by a Raspberry Pi - I caught it rebooting while driving past

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13 points

Yes. My work uses Ubuntu for certain touchscreen PoS devices they sell to their customers. It runs their proprietary apps automatically, and the end user doesn’t know or care that it’s Linux underneath.

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1 point

What are PoS devices?

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3 points

Point of sale. The devices you stick your card into to pay.

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4 points
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Yep, though in this case, it’s more like a cash register/scanner than a card reader.

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11 points

Pieces of shit devices

(Point of Sale, jokes aside. But they often are POS as well.)

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2 points

I worked in retail until 2016, and a few years before I left they switched all the PoS registers to Linux.

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2 points
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I came across a bowling arcade game that ran Linux. Still kind of wishing I’d bought it.

Pretty sure it’s this one.

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16 points

I saw the self checkout machines in my supermarket being restarted a few times and caught a glimpse of what was shown on the screen. Before they were upgrade some time ago they showed that CentOS was running and now I think that I saw Rocky Linux running on there. So yes, these are definitely out there and used widely.

Also I’ve see pictures of Raspberry Pis being used almost everywhere.

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8 points

Holy cow what country is this? All the self-service check outs in our Dutch Albert Heijns and Lidls use Windows 10/11!

A good boba tea shop, Sencha Silk near Arnhem Centraal, their self checkout used unregistered Windows 10’s and upgraded them to unregistered Windows 11’s recently, judging by the watermark on the bottom-right. Based.

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6 points

It’s Aldi in Germany. Running Linux however does not prevent these machines from getting errors all the time so often times there are only 3/6 machines available since an employee has to reset the software manually.

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3 points
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I can say that, at least in the Southwestern US, our local Kroger stores all use Linux of some variety at their self-checkouts. I’ve seen the same as above: mostly CentOS and Rocky.

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