• SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.ukEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    Er. Am I the only one to comment that this is a refreshing change to all the displays in shops, airports, etc that show the many ways that Windows errors and BSODs?

    Linux on the desktop? Hell no, it’s on 80’ billboards.

    (It’s not Arch btw)

    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
      71·
      1 year ago

      Running Windows for digital signage always struck me as an absolute waste of computing power. Just shove some low power Linux SBC into it and forget about it for about a decade or so

      • dan@upvote.au
        4·
        1 year ago

        A lot of the time, the whole company that runs the signage uses Windows, and the signage just uses one of their standard PCs with their standard Windows image. They probably already have a bunch of spares. Makes it easier for IT if they don’t have to support another configuration.

    • erwan@lemmy.ml
      5·
      1 year ago

      Since the Raspberry Pi has been released it’s pretty common.

    • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I just said “You know when Linux has taken over the world? When you don’t see blue screens on billboards.”

    • Sips'@slrpnk.net
      3·
      1 year ago

      Same here, was at the airport just last week and saw two screens running windows, absolute joke.

  • Cabbage@lemmy.ca
    71·
    1 year ago

    Reminds me of the garbage can that keeps crashing at the Tim Horton’s downtown

  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comBannedEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    looks like it’s starting cron? I’m assuming that’s debian/ubuntu then.

    Could be anything else, but if i had to posit a likely guess that would be mine.

  • communism@lemmy.ml
    3·
    1 year ago

    I wonder if this being a digital billboard is actually cheaper than just hiring some workers to swap out the printed advertisement every, I dunno how often they normally change, week or so?

    • Cort@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 year ago

      The benefit is being able to display 3+ different ads on rotation that change every minute or two. That, and labor is cheaper when they’re not 50ft off the ground

      • dan@upvote.au
        2·
        1 year ago

        The digital ones are also visible at night so the advertiser gets more impressions and the billboard ad company can charge more.

        • Dultas@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 year ago

          So are the printed ones. They just have flood lights pointing at them.

          • dan@upvote.au
            2·
            1 year ago

            The digital ones are way more visible though, at least the ones I see here. There’s also some here that are printed but don’t have lights, for whatever reason.

    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I dunno how often they normally change, week or so?

      Quick bit of googling suggests printed billboards have a ~$1k startup cost to the advertiser then a flat rate monthly fee, so I’d hazard a guess its probably 3-6 months at a time to amortize the startup cost

  • brax@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    1 year ago

    I was gonna say that it looks like every Linux install I’ve ever booted… But then I realized 90% of them have been Debian or Debian-based 😅

    • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      1 year ago

      that is the exact opposite of systemd: sysvinit

      you can recognize it by the iconic makefile line in the output, which indicates the setting CONCURRENCY=makefile has been chosen.

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
        2·
        1 year ago

        Ah, back in the days before Lennart and RHEL killed linux.

        Having only run debian for a job interview - where I had to learn systemd and I fucking crushed it, woo - I would never have picked out that makefile line. Kudos.

        Having run automation in 2002 based on package triggers, makefile, cron and awk, I completely approve of using makefiles to orchestrate startup. That’s actually genius.

        • Kindness@lemmy.ml
          0·
          1 year ago

          I’m still furious they intentionally broke CentOS. And then had the audacity to emulate SmallFloppy Glasspane and bake some spyware into Fedora.

          • lengau@midwest.social
            0·
            1 year ago

            This is the first I’ve heard about spyware in Fedora. Care to elaborate?

            • Ptsf@lemmy.world
              1·
              1 year ago

              Probably telemetry software. Basically mandated for any publicly traded software company these days.

              • dan@upvote.au
                1·
                1 year ago

                The thing is that telemetry can be useful… bug reports let the developer know which bugs occur the most, feature logging lets the developer know which features are used the most (and thus what they might want to focus on adding new functionality to), etc. It’s become a dirty word since a lot of companies have telemetry that’s way too intrusive.

  • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Why billboard system would have sane installed? I don’t think Debian or derivatives install it by default. Vnstat is also a bit odd, but maybe that’s just me. I assume they have multiple of these displays around and for them it would make more sense to use something more centralized, like zabbix, to monitor the whole network (obviously they could do that too).

    • kcuf@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      Probably for spray paint or other damage. Or maybe for identifying when it fails

      • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Or maybe for identifying when it fails

        That’s it exactly.

      • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        1 year ago

        Not much need to light a digital billboard.

        Unless this is the world’s most cryptic Debian ad, and that’s actually printed on…

    • erwan@lemmy.ml
      1·
      1 year ago

      My money is on Raspbian. Because it’s very likely powered by a Raspberry Pi.

  • visnudeva@lemmy.ml
    03·
    1 year ago

    Not Debian, it is how the arch Linux distros boot after the grub menu.