• SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.uk
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    7 months 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.com
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      7 months 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
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        7 months 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.

    • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com
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      7 months ago

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

    • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months 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
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        7 months 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
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          7 months ago

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

            • Ptsf@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

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

              • dan@upvote.au
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                7 months 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.

                • Ptsf@lemmy.world
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                  7 months ago

                  Yep! I understand, which is why I was clarifying for the previous commenter. As for if telemetry is morally justified, or if we should go back to old fashioned bug reports and some sort of upload system that requires direct user buy-in as the payment for privacy at the cost of reliability, mobility, and scalability is a discussion for someone else haha.

    • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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      7 months ago

      The blue stuff is insulation/vapor barrier on new construction, so it’s not even completely built yet.

  • brax@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months 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 😅

  • communism@lemmy.ml
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    7 months 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
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      7 months 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
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        7 months ago

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

          • dan@upvote.au
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            7 months 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.com
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      7 months 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

  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months 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.

  • Corngood@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    the wilds of Nova Scotia

    Walking across the Windsor Street exchange is wild for sure.

  • Cabbage@lemmy.ca
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    7 months ago

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

  • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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    7 months 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).

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      assume they have multiple of these displays around and for them it would make more sense to use something more centralized, like zabbix

      The one I saw a decade ago yielded SNMP to solarwinds (I know I know) rather well, but they mainly used PING on it to see when the radio link died.

      Fancy that – when the parks n rec sites were converted to e-billboards, they had power but no net line, and “radio’s fine”. Show me an old linux billboard host and I’ll show you a canvas my inner child can’t wait to e-graffiti.

      • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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        7 months ago

        Wait a second. They used AMPRNet to manage these things? In here this kind of things are either hardwired to the internet or they use 3/4/5G uplink and while of course techinally possible either way to breach the system it’s a bit more difficult to find out proper IP’s and everything.

        Once upon a time I had a task to plan a scalable system to display stuff on billboards and even replace printed ads on stores with monitors. The whole thing fell down as we couldn’t secure a funding for it, but I made a POC setup where individual displays had a linux host running and managing the display with (if memory serves) plain X.org session with mplayer (or something similar, it was about 20 years ago) running on full screen and a torrent network to deliver new content to them with a web-based frontend to manage what’s shown on which site. Back then it would’ve been stupidly expensive to have the hardware and bandwidth on a single point to service potentially few thousand clients, so distributing the load was the sensible solution. I think that even today it would be a neat solution for the task, but no one has put up the money to actually make it happen.