[dot] Dutch Record Shop Chain Migrates 1000 PCs to KDE on Novell Linux Desktop

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1131711558/

From: rinse <rinse at kde.nl>
Dept: we-got-that-on-record
Date: Friday 11/Nov/2005, @06:19

Dutch Record Shop Chain Migrates 1000 PCs to KDE on Novell Linux Desktop
========================================================================

   At first glance, a shop is not a place where you would expect to find
KDE in the workplace. Yet the Dutch Free Record Shop
[http://www.freerecordshop.com/] is deploying it on a large scale as the
operating system for their point of sale systems. According to the
supplier Novell [http://www.novell.com], it is one of the application
areas where limited functionality is sufficient leading to a
breakthrough for GNU/Linux on the PC.  An article from
Automatiseringsgids [http://www.automatiseringsgids.nl] magazine is
translated below.

     The 'Free Record Shop' is a chain of shops in the Benelux countries
along with a sister organisation Van Leest [http://www.vanleest.nl]. The
original Dutch company also has shops in Norway
[http://www.freerecordshop.no] and Finland
[http://www.freerecordshop.fi] with about 400 shops in total selling
CDs, DVDs and computer games. ICT Manager Ton Arrachart describes their
core activity as 'distribution of content in the area of home
entertainment'. In the past every division of the company had its own
ICT department, but now they have all been merged into the main office
in Capelle aan den IJssel. The central ICT department works as a shared
services centre for all divisions.

     "We didn't focus on cutting ICT costs, on the contrary, the
headcount has grown", according to Arrachart. His department now has 14
employees in house, and 5 in the field. The strategy is aimed at doing
only the essential ICT business in house and to outsource the rest.

     The Free Record Shop has been using PC cash registers since the
80's, when the founder Hans Breukhoven deployed software for shop
automation from Anoa Automatisering
[http://www.anoa.nl/html/mainorg.html] of Tilburg, running SCO UNIX
[http://www.sco.com/] on Intel CPUs. Around 2002/2003 they decided to
move to GNU/Linux, SCO's new licensing policy being one of the reasons
cited. At first they tested Red Hat Linux but found it did not meet
their requirements. Arrachart says "We wanted to provide a supported
service, a managed point-of-sale environment. Red Hat only provided
support from the Open Source community, which wouldn't have been usable
in the context of a service level agreement. Red Hat acknowledged this
issue and suggested using their Linux Enterprise Edition, but we had
some cost concerns about that approach."

     Anoa then offered SuSE Linux as alternative, and Cappelle assigned
him to port the UNIX application to Linux.  For financial reasons, the
Finnish division had already decided to migrate from UNIX to Linux.
Because of that, the first shops in Finland were already running Red Hat
Linux, but in the future they would move to Novell too.  The whole setup
was aimed at simplicity and effectiveness. "The cash register only has
one task: billing and showing stock", Breukhoven says, "an efficient
environment was wanted. We did not object to a graphical interface, but
it needed to be stripped down as far as possible and Windows was not an
option..". He continues, "..as then you would be subject to Mr Gate's
licensing policies, and it would have also meant more investment in
hardware."

     The new cash register PCs run a stripped down version of the Novell
Linux Desktop. According to Arrachart, although all essential components
are present, a great deal of software has been stripped out of the KDE
Desktop GUI.  The applications remaining include a PDF viewer and X
Server, with KDE's Kiosk mode and associated admin tool being used to
lock down the configuration.  Access to the central applications is
provided via a web browser.  At first, the shop employees will only get
the base packages so email using a separate application won't be
possible, although it can still be done via a web portal.

     Each shop has about 2 or 3 PCs; one is the head console and can be
used by the shop manager to access the central server based
applications. The other PCs are used as cash registers.

     At the moment, almost all shops in The Netherlands and Belgium
already use the KDE Desktop. After that phase is complete, the migration
team will go to Norway and Finland to migrate the PCs used by the Free
Record Shop and Bravo chains. "It's a fun project" says Arrachart, "We
can show that you can save costs with ICT, while at the same time
allowing greater possibilities in the way the shops are organised."  All
the cash registers in the Netherlands Free Record Shops are geared
towards simplicity and effectiveness. The Head of ICT concludes "so
Windows is not a viable option."

     The original article can be found at automatiseringsgids
[http://www.automatiseringsgids.nl/news/default.asp?artId=18691],
membership subscription required.