Onwards! To the airport and adventure! And this rather lachrymose Linux screen
- Reference: 1600848604
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/09/23/bork/
- Source link:
Its ubiquity makes Windows a common culprit, but today's entry in the is Linux-tinged and comes from a Scottish airport. It was snapped by Register reader Bob Madden, who found himself lucky enough to have made it as far as the departure lounge.
Slung from the ceiling is, alas, a screen of Linux despair. Rather than flinging advertisements or departure information at those excited by the prospect of actually boarding an aircraft and going somewhere, all Ubuntu has to offer is a display of purest black.
[1]
Ubuntu 16.04 was released in 2016 and, being a Long Term Support (LTS) edition, will see security maintenance from the Canonical crew until 2024. Standard support expires in 2021. Dubbed Xenial Xerus by those crazy guys, it has since been superseded by the 18.04 LTS, Bionic Beaver, and, most recently, 20.04 LTS (aka Focal Fossa). The latter will see affection from Canonical until 2030 rolls around, by which time we can but hope normality will have returned to the departure lounge.
We also can't help but note the version is 16.04.3 LTS. While the "if it works, don't fsck with it" maxim is understandable for digital signage, Canonical has continued updating the distribution. The most recent, 16.04.7, dropped in August and [2]featured all manner of tweaks and fixes for the ageing operating system.
Something, however, is amiss with this incarnation of Canonical's finest. Ubuntu is in a holding state until somebody logs in and starts things up, and travellers are left pondering the meaning of it all and whether they will ever reach their destinations.
A fine metaphor for 2020, which, when we kicked off this feature, we had no idea would become the most borked year of recent times. ®
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[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/09/22/bork9.jpg
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/ReleaseNotes/ChangeSummary/16.04.7
[3] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: I wouldn't call it "Linux despair" ...
In today’s subcontracted, offshored world the responsible meat bag could be anywhere in any time zone. It could stay that way for a long time if there is nobody who needs to care enough to get it fixed sees it.
I volunteer in a charity shop, the till barcode reader is non functional and it is unclear who to call to get it fixed. The number taped to the screen reported they no longer handle the contract. So I have been eyeballing a lot of numbers and punching them into the touchscreen. Which runs some old version of Windows. I don’t have enough access to determine much more than that as it’s in kiosk mode.
There are rumours of new tills coming, possibly because the Windows version is shortly to be utterly unsupported by Redmond. That will be good, several of the onscreen numbers are less than responsive when pressed. We might not be able to input 0 before too long. Punching up 20,000 instead of £20.00 is not uncommon as repeated presses to an unresponsive system cause havoc.
Still at least nitrile gloves work well on touchscreens and hourly cleaning of the perspex screens separating me from customers punctuates the shift. Blue paper towel rolls and anti viral spray cleaner are now ubiquitous.
Re: I wouldn't call it "Linux despair" ...
All we need is a camera pointed at every screen, with some AI to recognise error screens. Then the AI can electroshock a meatbag (its words, not mine) to get them to fix it.
It couldn't be simpler!
Re: I wouldn't call it "Linux despair" ...
Most modern barcode readers pretend to be a USB connected keyboard, even the cordless dongle ones, and there are also variants which act as a Bluetooth keyboard (I have two of those, and they tend to also read QR codes as they're camera based, not LED/laser scan). Most of these can also be programmed to hit Return after a scan.
So, as long as your software uses keyboard input routines it should not be hard to replace the barcode readers with something from Amazon.
Look for the name "Netum" - they tend to be reasonably well documented and are usually in stock.
Re: I wouldn't call it "Linux despair" ...
"Cleaner 'didn't tell anyone' when charity shop accidentally deposited £90,000 in account"
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/cleaner-didnt-tell-anyone-charity-22620073
Re: I wouldn't call it "Linux despair" ...
The screen is probably network booting from some server and just can't talk to whatever it wants to talk to.
"A Scottish airport"?
As someone who was a frequent flyer until Covid (thankfully) put an end to that, I can tell from the photo which airport it is. Just curious as to why El Reg is being coy about naming it?
Re: "A Scottish airport"?
Why do you not tell us ?
Re: "A Scottish airport"?
Because they may have a very good reason for not doing so.
Re: "A Scottish airport"?
Maybe it's like 'the scottish play' and can't be named for superstitious reasons
What's this continued fascination with broken PCs all about? Are there no real news stories at the moment?
We need some light relief from the real news stories.
Uborkuity?
Is it Windows' ubiquity that means you see more crashes, or that Windows crashes more so you see more crashes?
Re: Uborkuity?
Yes.
Anything else I can help with?
:)
I think that Microsoft should take note of this series of articles, and re-design their error screens to look more Penguinish, just to confuse the hell out of those taking photos of borkage.
I wouldn't call it "Linux despair" ...
... as Linux is cheerfully awaiting someone to login and give it a job to do. Rather, I'd call it a case of human forgetfulness ... someone forgot to tell it to run a specific script on startup. I'd suggest starting with updating, if the box is, in fact, connected to the outside world.