
Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays? - edent
http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/11/why-do-companies-still-use-microsoft-windows-for-displays/
======
terhechte
I've worked for quite some time in the digital display industry, at a company
which has a very feature rich, Mac OS X based digital signage solution [1]
with high profile customers such as Mercedes-Benz, or Disney. Since the
company is small, it is easy to be part of all steps of the process, including
marketing and sales. I learned a lot about B2B buying behaviour while I worked
for this company.

We oftentimes ran into the situation where a potential customer really liked
our solution, but wanted to run Windows instead of Mac OS X (this was arguably
a lot tougher in 2005 when we started, and less so after the iPhone hit).
There were a variety of reasons for this:

\- Windows was the OS that the company was also using for employee machines,
so they knew it.

\- The IT department only wanted Windows machines on their network (our grand
solution for this was that our machines were sold with direct support and did
not need to run on the customers network, which also removed a lot of security
pain)

\- The customer was afraid of Mac OS X because they thought it would not be
stable enough

But most importantly, it came down to simple risk aversion. The employee at a
big company that was internally responsible for the 'digital signage' project,
would base every decision on which choice would be less risky for his carreer
in case the project fails. Lets say they roll out digital signage, and it
costs a lot of money, and it doesn't work right. In that case, the employee
needs to be able to defend himself against all sorts of questions: "Why was
this product chosen", "Why was this vendor chosen", "Why was it implemented in
this way", etc. In that case, being able to answer "We choose Windows, because
it is the de facto standard" is better for the career than having to say "It
seemed to be a stable product". Out of this reason alone, we found companies
would choose a solution where they knew that it was far worse (less stable,
less flexible, less features) simply because on paper it looked less _risky_.

[1] [http://www.videro.com/](http://www.videro.com/)

~~~
route66
You frame the three points a bit derogatory and seem to have missed the point
of your customers.

> Windows was the OS that the company was also using for employee machines, so
> they knew it.

They understand it, have an idea about the cost and amount of support
necessary. "They knew it" seems to convey that they were essentially stupid or
not adventurous enough to try something else.

> The IT department only wanted Windows machines on their network

Again: a complete valid reason in my view. Here on this forum you have even
people advocating that server and client in web apps should be written in the
same language to keep things consistent.

> The customer was afraid of Mac OS X because they thought it would not be
> stable enough

You make that sound like there teeth were rattling in horror, but apparently
failed to convince them that OSX would be stable enough?

I'm not a Windows developer or -user, indications that win 98 runs on my ATM
also make me concerned.

But "muhaha, they are just stupid bricks for using windows" (no, you did not
say that, but it sums the attitude) shows a lack of understanding and, as a
consequence, does not advance the spread of alternatives into these
environments IMO.

~~~
terhechte
Sorry, that wasn't my attitude nor was I intending to sound that way. I fully
understand why they'd rather use a Windows solution, I just wanted to explain
in a simple way what I thought their motivations were.

> "They knew it" seems to convey that they were essentially stupid or not
> adventurous enough to try something else. I did not intend to convey that
> they were stupid or not adventurous enough, I simply thought "knew it" would
> be a sufficient enough description. I did not intend "knew it" in a
> pejorative way at all.

> You make that sound like there teeth were rattling in horror No, not really,
> actually I remember discussions with big companies where those were the
> exact words ("Our IT department is concerned with the stability of this Mac
> OS X")

> "muhaha, they are just stupid bricks for using windows Again, no, I just
> tried to explain the seemingly irrational behaviour (for tech people) of
> choosing a technologically worse solution even though better solutions
> exists. I wasn't even talking about Windows actually, but about digital
> signage solutions _based on_ Windows. I'd rather not go and open the box of
> pandora that is Windows <> Linux <> Mac OS X. Most of our competitors that
> ran on Windows (situation may have changed, I left that company more than 2
> years ago) were on the feature side and in terms of possibilities worse than
> our solution (not only because it was easy to pull of a lot of things with
> Core Graphics really easy).

I really can't see where you read the "those people were stupid" attitude, but
it may be a cultural difference, I'm not a native english speaker.
Nevertheless, even if I sounded that way, it totally wasn't intended that way.
If I were in a big (non-tech) company in such a situation, I might even decide
in a similar way out of the above reasons.

~~~
avenger123
Here's a voice on your side. I totally did not get the impression that you
were being derogatory in any way.

------
UnoriginalGuy
Last year I was on an aircraft watching the IFE, then it froze, I got a kernel
panic, then it restarted, I was left looking at a Linux logo then the init
output before being thrown back into the IFE interface.

My point is that no general purpose OS is immune from fault. All you can
really do is remove or disable things which aren't absolutely needed to get
your work done. In this case they should have disabled Windows explorer
(which, by the way, is supported) or used one of the specialized cut-down
versions of Windows (e.g. Windows Embedded 8).

PS - Although I will readily admit that Microsoft makes it insanely hard to
licence Windows Embedded, particularly for SMBs. But Microsoft's licensing is
far harder than it needs to be across the board, they have an old-mode mindset
where they can charge more if they make the whole process harder.

~~~
dhimes
I saw one boot last week on a Delta flight. I was very surprised to see Tux.

~~~
krallin
Same on United — we actually got to watch the full boot sequence (^ ^)

~~~
dhimes
I was surprised how long it took- several minutes.

------
joosters
Because the hardware support is good.

Because the licensing costs are pretty small compared to the project costs.

Because there is plenty of tech support available.

Because Windows flash support is good.

Because there are plenty of developers who will customize it for you.

Because it is easy to add to the existing networking systems being used.

There are plenty of reasons to choose Windows for this kind of thing. why is
the article even complaining that the OS is old? No need for cutting-edge
here. (EDIT: Oops, that was in the comments section)

(LOL at the mouse jiggler software though!)

~~~
shittyanalogy
Also,

    
    
        Any general purpose OS would have these problems
        It's stable
        Tech support is easy to find
        Software can be easily demoed
    

A better title for the article would have been:

Who's paying these shitty IT guys?

------
rangelreale
I'm the lead developer in a company that does just digital signage software in
Brazil.

Recently we rewrote from stratch our software in Qt so it would run on Linux
and Android, even on the Raspberry Pi.

The main barriers we found in Linux adoption were:

\- Support staff only knows Windows. This gets worse when screens get
installed in remote areas, like we have some screens at Manaus, in the Amazon
Forest. There is just no one to support Linux there.

\- Flash support state in Linux is unknown. Adobe seems to be discontinuing
support for flash in Linux, and flash movies cannot be run on the Raspberry Pi
or any ARM device.

\- HTML5 is the next target, but even on Windows the embedded webbrowsers are
not up to par yet on performance, in Raspberry Pi it is inviable. It cannot
replace 100% Flash yet.

\- Remote admin support on dynamic IP is great in Windows with Logmein,
terrible on other platforms. Yes there's TeamViewer on Linux but it seem not
too stable, not to say it looks like to be running emulated. Our customers
don't trust it the way they trust Logmein.

That said, we are seeing increased Linux adoptions for some markets. If the
Qt5 Blink-based webbrowser is more on par in performance with current desktop
browsers, than the adoption may rise a lot.

EDIT: fix newlines

~~~
toddkaufmann
To login to remote machines with dynamic IPs, have a loop on the remote
machine that logs in using ssh to your server and creates an ssh connection
back to it. Remote has ssh key, with ssh config that says "Remoteforward 23456
localhost:22" and on your server have the shell for the remote id be a command
like "sleep 300". Tunnel will restart every five minutes (unless it has active
connections), this reduces the likelihood of it hanging. A ~20 line cron or
daemon script, an ssh key, ssh config file, account on server, authorized_keys
entry with command specified, and some testing.

------
zdw
People use what they know. Given a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

If you work in IT for any length of time, you come across people who use Excel
as a text combiner to parse tabular text in ways similar to how a regex could,
or have similar convoluted workarounds for any number of tasks.

In some ways, these are quite clever hacks.

In other ways, it's kind of sad as it obviously shows how badly GUI-centric
"It's a fancy typewriter" attitudes toward computers have ruined generations
of users by giving them substandard tools which they barely can make work for
an automation task.

I'd love to see a "Signs in Stores-ix" as much as the next guy... but most
people who do this are probably designers or businesspeople whose computer
worldview doesn't extend behind Photoshop and Powerpoint. And thus, that's
what was mandated on the displays...

~~~
Spearchucker
I would argue that Windows is a great platform for such displays. Not sure how
many of these were written, but knocking up an attractive list template in
XAML and binding it to a list is a walk in the park. Dev cost must be next to
nothing. Call it what you will, but it's the front-end I'd prefer to develop
such displays on. WinRT makes such a use case even more compelling. And Mono
unfortunately doesn't support WPF.

~~~
_random_
Yeah, XAML is basically a better HTML. Vector-first and has containers that
actually align things the way you want.

------
JohnDotAwesome
I worked with an IT department (all windows shop, but not afraid of Linux) who
setup large screen high definition tv's around the facility for a request to
support digital signage. The department wanted to save money, so they took on
a DIY attitude instead of building it themselves.

Well, they know the windows platform and had windows machines lying around.
They hooked up PC's to these TV's mounted high up on the wall, either mounted
the PC on the TV or put it somewhere that couldn't be seen, and put powerpoint
viewer on the PC's.

This might sound like a disaster, but the higher-ups loved it. And it worked
quite nicely to my surprise. Windows can easily be configured to start the
powerpoint file of your choice in fullscreen mode when the machine starts.
Creating the material was as easy making a powerpoint.

So, in the end, the cost of materials and time was minimized because these
guys used Windows + Powerpoint for their digital signage. And since they
weren't using some buggy piece of custom software, it was fairly stable.

You may not like Windows, but it's a _fine_ computing platform. People get
_work done_ with it. Personally, I'll stick with OSX.

------
jsingleton
A lot of these systems are just displaying a web page which makes it very easy
to move to Linux. I know a lot of the transport ones are simple static web
pages on auto refresh. I built some smarter screens which use AJAX and
JavaScript which is less jarring when it updates.

I've changed a set of digital signs from running full screen IE on windows
(with very long VGA cables) to chromium on Raspberry Pis. The new system
behaves a lot better but there were lots of little things to tweak to get it
running well. I wrote a short blog post with all the relevant configuration:
[https://shutdownscanner.com/Blog/Posts/Raspberry-Pi-
Digital-...](https://shutdownscanner.com/Blog/Posts/Raspberry-Pi-Digital-Sign)

A lot of the new TVs are smart and come with a built in android browser so you
don't need anything else. We have one of these and run Pis on all the existing
dumb TVs.

------
radicalbyte
The total cost of using Windows is (probably) lower than using Linux. These
displays are often custom work - building something like that is a couple of
days work for a WPF or Flash (/Air) developer. The vast majority of those use
Windows. And I've not even touched on the administration costs..

To be honest I'm more concerned when I see ATMs running Windows 98; at least
these advertising displays can't do any real damage...

~~~
MarcScott
It freaked me out when an ATM BSODed on me. Its happen when I've used a Tesco
self-service checkout as well.

~~~
jbrooksuk
Tesco self-service checkouts break all the bloody time on me. Watching it
reboot is kind of fun though.

------
rwmj
Some ideas:

\- The cost of a Windows license is tiny compared to the cost of the hardware
and software.

\- The cost of installation and maintenance: How much does it cost to pay
someone to attach that screen to the wall and run wires around the building to
the room containing the server?

\- Back in 1995 it probably did make sense to use Windows, since it had wider
support for hardware and good developer tools. Now that there is a huge amount
of software written in the 90s for Windows, it's going to take a very long
time to change that (if ever).

\- Windows might actually be better for this even now.

~~~
mtgx
If Microsoft is selling them these "solutions" (not products) directly, then
it's likely the hardware costs several times more than if you'd buy it from
the store.

------
silverbax88
I love the fact that the author thinks Windows is unsuitable because the
people who are using it for displays don't know how to turn off a screensaver,
but somehow those same people will magically understand how to run Linux
without a hitch.

------
justincormack
I did once have a Linux boot screen come up on the Coca-Cola sign at
Piccadilly Circus (with two penguins, it was a dual CPU back in the day),
after a power cut. Alas I didn't have a camera with me. After that I moved the
boot console to a different output. Back in the day when I was in this
business flash was the big thing that pushed people to Windows as people
wanted to do flash content as thats what Ad agencies could produce.

------
ericcumbee
One of my responsibilities was to serve as admin for our campuses digital
signage system. It used windows based machines. The cost of the Windows OS was
trivial compared to the cost of the hardware and the license for the digital
signage software. it also helped that if need be these systems could be
managed with our existing toolset such as SCCM and remote desktop. and if we
needed to do something that the Digital Signage software could not do for
special occasions if there was a windows app for it, it was that simple.

------
w0rd-driven
Ahh something I can speak to directly.

At my current gig, we use SiteKiosk which locks windows down _tight_. It uses
the IE WebBrowser control via ActiveX/COM/.Net/however the hell it works. Its
basically IE but slightly shittier due to there not being a 1:1 between it and
IE proper. SiteKiosk has some pretty powerful digital signage features you
don't really get from a Windows Embedded scenario. One feature of 8.1 I was
looking forward to was "kiosk mode" but with WinRT being blocked from talking
to localhost, except through a hack (yes, fuck you Microsoft) it was stillborn
for my tastes.

.NET apps are ClickOnce or xbap, which is basically pre-Silverlight. This is
the suckiest part. SiteKiosk can run normal applications and Silverlight with
no problems but it took SL 5 to get proper COM support and it isn't terribly
easy to make your normal .NET library "just work" so that wrapper for a card
dispenser isn't as easy to leverage. Due to the low number of these apps (2),
we haven't bothered migrating away from shitty xbap.

The largest amount of applications use typical wamp running a lightweight PHP
framework and sometimes MySQL as localhost. Some are completely or partially
Flash driven applications as well.

SiteKiosk and leveraging IE lets us focus on perfecting the experience though
I've become complacent. IE development is just too slow now and testing in
Chrome with superior dev tools are absolutely essential. The problem there is
we can easily paint ourselves into a Chrome-only corner if we aren't careful.

Leveraging the POS equipment like barcode readers, card dispensers, or
printers are the only thing the web proper isn't really suited for
unfortunately. This may be where Windows has much more leverage due to their
driver model. Most equipment we interfaced with had a .NET library or simple
instructions of use with P/Invoke. I saw very little (<1%) that had anything
to do with Linux and in typical fashion wasn't something to simply use via
something like PHP or Ruby/Rails. Maybe we chose Windows friendly vendors,
though, so take this with a grain of salt.

------
tlarkworthy
I bet the whole ecosystem of updating, remotely maintaining, selling an advert
and designing an advert on a display in a train station is deeply engrained in
windows technologies, and swapping the front is not trivial. I bet everyone
knows its shit long term but the cost of migration outweighs the short term
fixes (mouse wiggler!). Probably its what the customers want anyway

------
ChuckMcM
I don't know the answer to the question, I do know the answer to the question
"Why do digital signage vendors use Windows as their host platform?" seems to
be so that they can hire unskilled labor. In various embedded forums I see
questions about doing digital signage on Android/Linux while exploiting the
graphics acceleration of the SoC get met by stony silence (no drivers) or
complex installs (blobs + release compatibilty). Its way too much work so
these guys get Windows, and all the vendors have Windows drivers and are
willing to let you incorporate them into your code and hiring a Windows
programmer has a bigger pool to draw upon.

Combine that with customers who want to use Windows tools to configure/upload
to their signs and IT folks who are "comfortable" with Windows on their
network and voila, mutual lock in.

------
romanovcode
>Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?

Because it's cheaper. All you talk about is license but what about actual work
of setting it up and making it work?

Also, you really think that only WinOS kiosk systems are crashing? You really
are so ignorant to think that LinuxOS kiosk systems never crash?

------
jballanc
A quick Google search of the phrase "build an animated display" with one of
the following strings appended to the end reveals the answer, I should think:

"raspberry pi" \-- 1,060,000 results

"linux" \-- 4,890,000 results

"os x" \-- 6,910,000 results

"windows" \-- 32,800,000 results

~~~
alexchamberlain
There's an office near work that gives its receptionists Macs; it looks great,
but an insane amount of money for the functionality they use I'm sure.

~~~
simonw
Alternatively, if it saves them a few days of work in lost productivity due to
malware, viruses and unintuitive software, it's a great investment.

~~~
pionar
Ha, I had to laugh at the "unintuitive software" bit. It's only unintuitive to
a Mac user. I'm not insulting here, it works the other way, too. I recently
bought a Mac to see what all the fuss was about, and am finding many things in
OS X to be very counter-intuitive as a PC (Win/Linux) user for so many years.

------
cyclotron
I'm not a fan of Windows, but when I saw this post it reminded me of a picture
I took at 30th street station in Philadelphia. I guess this was an attempt to
use Linux for an visitor information kiosk.

[http://imgur.com/oULGTjJ](http://imgur.com/oULGTjJ)

~~~
mousefad
You want some information, visitor? Well here you go. Enjoy.

------
300bps
Inaccurate title. It should read, "Why Do Companies Still Use Something I
Hate?"

Seriously, complaining that an out of disk space error message pops up on
signs? I have a Slackware Linux box that has been running for years. Probably
ran out of disk space a dozen times since I first installed it so I know from
personal experience it's not immune from running out of disk space.

------
chromanoid
When you don't know why this is, you are either a passionate hobbyist or you
don't see reality. Choosing an operating system is nothing you should do for
the sake of it. Not everybody is as passionate as you and want to memorize CLI
commands. Why do you think Windows and iOS are so successful? Most developers
feel like most end users, they don't care as long as it runs and it can be
easily operated. And this is a wise attitude.

------
tmcw
Well, Windows-supporting hardware is cheap. Raspberry PIs don't have the
processing power to run anything more than basic HTML pages. Finding 'cheap
macs' is a losing battle - Apple hardware holds its value. Running Linux on a
display-ware system with a fancy video card relies on drivers for that fancy
video card, and there aren't any.

------
ExpiredLink
[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?NobodyEverGotFiredForBuyingMicrosoft](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?NobodyEverGotFiredForBuyingMicrosoft)

~~~
Qantourisc
High time for me to become a manager then!

------
sillysaurus2
Because .NET makes it very easy for average developers to write GUI programs,
and Visual Studio is what they use to write them.

In theory, this developer could just use Mono to run his .NET app on Linux.
But that requires them to learn how to do that. Personally, I've never found a
clear tutorial on how to take a .NET GUI app that you've just written in
Visual Studio and get it running on Mono. I haven't looked in several years,
so I thought I'd give it a try right now. I googled "visual studio mono" and
these were the top 3 results:

[http://www.mono-project.com/Visual_Studio_Integration](http://www.mono-
project.com/Visual_Studio_Integration)

[http://www.mono-
project.com/Working_with_Mono_and_Visual_Stu...](http://www.mono-
project.com/Working_with_Mono_and_Visual_Studio)

[http://www.mono-project.com/GettingStartedWithMonoTools](http://www.mono-
project.com/GettingStartedWithMonoTools)

None of those are clear at all. The second page links to this screencast:
[http://www.mfconsulting.com/product/prj2make-
sharp/tutorial/...](http://www.mfconsulting.com/product/prj2make-
sharp/tutorial/TestInMono-SwfApp.html)

which illustrates how to use this thing with Visual Studio 2003(!) and
demonstrates part of the problem: the Mono version of the app looks noticeably
different from the native Windows version. Sure, this can probably be fixed,
but it's yet another issue that the dev has to spend time learning how to hack
around.

This situation results in substantial cognitive overhead. It's unlikely that
an average .NET dev will be able to go into work, install this Mono plugin,
compile their app using it, and present to their coworkers, "Look! We don't
have to change our process at all, and we can deploy our app on the latest
Ubuntu with a minimum of hassle."

It's hard to imagine how wonderful it is to build .NET apps compared to
dealing with Qt, because Visual Studio's GUI designer is just _so good_.
Suffice to say, there are a lot of network effects that keep a developer
mentally locked into Visual Studio's paradigm of "here's how you make this GUI
form;" a paradigm which is immensely difficult for Linux to support natively.

I think it's a mistake for Linux to even try to support this, though, because
it's probably focusing on the wrong problem. The way to beat Microsoft is to
make it so easy to write cross platform business apps that newer generations
never even bother figuring out how to install Visual Studio. I think the web
browser will be that solution within the next decade. It's not quite there yet
-- it's way easier to get a GUI workflow up and running using VS's designer --
but it seems inevitable. So if you share the author's concerns, then the best
course of action is to write some quality tutorials for your web frameworks,
and to invent easier frameworks. The advantages of the web will naturally
outweigh any possible native program advantage.

~~~
Spearchucker
Not to detract from your points (you make good ones); web is probably not a
good medium for such displays. Not always, at least. You'd want them to be
reasonably functional without comms. Last I checked (I may be wrong), HTML 5
constrains local storage to 5Mb, which is precious little, if the display uses
images/media.

~~~
krallin
I'm not an expert in embedded displays, but I assume you'd simply run a
webserver on localhost.

~~~
Spearchucker
Web server means additional complexity both to deploy and maintain. After 20+
years in the corporate world I can guarantee that an alone-standing native
client it going to beat anything with a web server.

~~~
boomlinde
"Beat", how exactly? 20+ years in the corporate world doesn't mean much if you
can't back your opinion up with proper arguments.

Besides the confusing fact that you bring HTML5 local storage into the
equation for some reason, a local web server doesn't necessarily mean more
complex deployment/maintenance than maintaining a .NET application.

~~~
Spearchucker
The problem is governance. The web sever needs to be patched, the web site
configuration needs to be maintained, as does the web application. Bear in
mind that a display doesn't live in an IT department, and that developers
don't maintain apps - operations does. So if you compare the web server/web
site scenario to a single, self-configuring native app (presumably a single
.exe and a couple .dlls or something, the .exe is cheaper over a 3 or 5 year
lifespan, especially if the .exe works with SCCM and ops can push updates out
using WSUS or similar.

~~~
boomlinde
I guess if you're into Windows, setting up a web server actually _is_ a hassle
to you. Rest assured that there are easier ways. If you simply want to use a
web server for local sharing, forget about patching and "maintaining" the
configuration. Just install it and you're done (or why not use the file:// URI
scheme? I can't see any compelling reason not to in a non-interactive setup).
As for maintaining the web application, well, only in the same sense you have
to maintain your .NET application.

Also, pulling numbers out of nowhere isn't going to help your argument.

~~~
_mgr
If anyone I oversee actively decides to not patch and maintain a system within
an enterprise network for any reason, they will find themselves back on
helpdesk doing password resets until they learn better. Pentesters / hackers
love using setups like you suggest as easy targets to provide them with
perstitant backdoors.

3 and 5 years are the common life cycle's enterprise IT use when discussing
any existing implementation or any new system design. These are not pulled
from nowhere.

~~~
boomlinde
First off, when I say "maintaining" I meant the configuration. When I say
patching, I mean patching, not just trivially installing software updates.
Spearchucker was trying to make this a look like a huge disadvantage over
maintaining a Windows system, which it obviously is not.

Oh and as far as I'm concerned "3 to 5 years" is still pulled out of nowhere.
You aren't mentioning any sources, just describing a really vague process that
you think is "common". If you have a working, flexible system with which you
can harness a huge continuous effort in developing the technology behind it
for free, you aren't going to kill it off just because your enterprise clock
says so.

------
kayoone
Honestly, even if it was using Linux, there could be a million ways for the
app to crap out and show dubious messages.

Doing it this way was probably the easiest way in the mind of the responsible
engineer and i am sure it generally works fine.

That MouseJiggler thing is pretty lame though ;)

------
mariusz79
Most of the software dev in the world don't know anything besides one language
(either java or vb) and one operating system they encountered right after
school. And even when they do - management doesn't.

------
apaprocki
Just wanted to point out that Microsoft does offer an embedded version of
Windows that is _supposed_ to be used for these types of applications so stuff
like in the post does not happen. But, due to how extremely annoying it is to
configure (properly) and create an image, most users probably skip it and opt
for a standard Windows image and all the issues that come with it.

------
seivan
Like anything shitty in tech being used, decisions pulled by non-engineers.

~~~
_random_
...who are good at estimating business value rather then playing with obscure
unsupported tech.

~~~
stephen_g
No, usually they're going with the option that feels 'safe'. Things that tick
the right boxes on paper, but may often end up being far more
expensive/difficult to support etc. when it actually comes down to it...

------
stusmall
"When all you have is hammers the whole world starts looking like nails."

Sure as hell not the way I'd do it, but for a non-critical system that really
just kind of sits there and doesn't cause any problems when it crashes, why
not if they only know Windows desktop dev and are only deploying a few? Use
what you know.

------
salient
Because unfortunately, most of these companies are clueless about technology,
and buy from whoever comes to them through the door, pitching them about how
awesome it would be to buy some thousand dollar/unit such displays, and have
them show info to their customers.

------
INTPenis
My brother works for a digital signage company here in Sweden and combined
with my experiences in IT I would say there simply isn't enough competence.

On one hand it scares companies because they think they can't find Linux
people when they need them.

On the other hand the universities are crunching out .NET and Java coders who
have no ideological reason to use Linux.

Something that could fill the niche here is open software platforms for
digital signage. Because the more user friendly Linux gets, the more I'm
seeing of it in Enterprise environments. So if only someone could make the
Fedora or Ubuntu of digital signage using open source.

------
jroseattle
There is a Windows-based digital display in the grocery near our house. It is
perpetually displaying some Windows dialog about the advertising program they
have installed has failed/ab-ended in some manner. Seriously, I'm not sure the
display has ever worked correctly (I go there a lot.)

However, I watched the crew on a Virgin America flight announce that we had to
"reboot" the plane because the entertainment system was frozen. It was, and
everyone could see it -- it was Linux-based (not certain which flavor, pretty
sure it was Debian-based though.) It had frozen, and all the screens (one for
every seat) had a console stuck in some batch job and displaying the output to
the screen. Luckily, we were still on the ground, so the reboot wasn't so bad.

But it was alarming. Reboot a Windows-based advertising display? Who cares.
Reboot the plane because the Linux-based system is frozen? Quite a bit more
alarming.

------
protomyth
When we bought a display for purely display (Samsung), it came with Microsoft
Windows built-in so there was nothing else to buy and we didn't need to mount
another device.

Before that, we had a Mac mini in the conference room because we found a nice
mount, and now we are just buying TVs and mounting an Apple TV.

------
rythie
I wondered this until we did it and then all of the suitable solutions used
Windows (we are mostly a Linux house). We didn't want to build our own
solution so just used that. We actually just use [http://www.cool-
screensavers.com/onlinews.html](http://www.cool-
screensavers.com/onlinews.html) \- I'd much prefer a HTML5 or even a flash
solution, but I've never found a suitable one.

We've been running the same system for 6 ish years, sometimes people ask us to
put powerpoint or videos on the displays, which would be more difficult if it
was a Linux system.

The main problem with the displays is not viruses, but rather pop-ups telling
you need to do some update or other (like the one shown in the article).

------
jamesjguthrie
To me this clearly just looks like a plug for the guy's friend. Hardly an
interesting article.

------
dmaselbas
At one point I was writing a small custom DS platform for a client with a big
corporate MS it staff. They all had their microsoft books on their desks
relating to their job responsibilities. Any mention of something that didn't
have a ms or cisco logo on it, was instantly meet with disapproval. Long story
kinda short, I failed and lost out to another vendor, because i couldn't
convince the IT guy I had been partnered with that Java and javascript weren't
the same thing. I was having issues with js on ie9, they read it as
incompetence; little do they know (or not now for that matter).

------
tammer
Adding Linux or other OS support to a Windows IT shop requires more than a
trivial amount of work and added overhead, especially if security is
regulated. It's always cost/benefit.

------
roryhughes
I would say when they need some displays set up, they don't want to buy in any
new computers so they just get the old office PC's which aren't in use
anymore.

------
SloughFeg
I noticed a malfunctioning display on the CTA here in Chicago and it was
running on chrome. Still on Windows but at least they had the foresight to
make it portable.

------
JIghtuse
Yep, it is pretty common. In Novosibirsk (Russia) such displays installed in
subways (metro) and all of them shows some error when I see them. It is weird.

------
jeffeld
Windows has had a kiosk mode since at least XP. It's still there in 8.1
([http://blogs.msdn.com/b/hyperyash/archive/2013/10/25/enable-...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/hyperyash/archive/2013/10/25/enable-
kiosk-mode-in-windows-8-1.aspx)).

All the benefits of a managed Windiws installation, and suitable for 99.9% of
kiosk requirements. Probably.

------
shdisi
I've been talking about this for years:

[http://shitdigitalsignage.tumblr.com](http://shitdigitalsignage.tumblr.com)

------
duncan_bayne
At the company I work, we use Windows for an array of monitors running in our
network operations centre. The only reason we went with Windows was that the
display multiplexer thingy we bought doesn't support Linux.

Our app is entirely web-based, so it was quite possible to choose any
reasonably modern OS.

[http://xkcd.com/934/](http://xkcd.com/934/)

------
qas1981
I think its really about lowering barriers to entry. The more people that
understand how to operate a system decreases risk. Plenty of people understand
Window OS and how to run an application. With this knowledge everyone just can
be an expert on how to operate the displays.

------
dragontamer
I don't think Linux supports the 18-screen configurations that Windows can
support.

[http://semiaccurate.com/2013/06/13/sapphire-
shows-18-screen-...](http://semiaccurate.com/2013/06/13/sapphire-
shows-18-screen-demo-in-computex/)

------
SunboX
Seen lately on big airport (Frankfurt) in Germany:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/50x9xhme7r5tm8e/Foto%2003.10.13%20...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/50x9xhme7r5tm8e/Foto%2003.10.13%2016%2010%2002.jpg)

------
AshleysBrain
I've noticed a lot of ATMs run Windows for the display, and suffer similar
problems. It's really quite unnerving to really need to use an ATM, but a
Windows XP Start bar is showing with some strangely named programs running...

------
kaeluka
I've seen presentations being really embarrassing because of windows-updates
too.

~~~
tripa
Yet Windows updates are a conveniently globally shared problem.

For real embarassment, nothing beats the unpaid software nag.

------
informatimago
That said, I have seen panic'ed linux systems on such screens too. But
granted, it is easier to run a single program as /bin/init on a linux system
than to configure a proprietary OS.

------
shmerl
They can build their own custom made kiosk using Mer as a base (and Qt for UI)
in a matter of days. The reason they are using Windows is probably inertia and
ignorance.

------
kmfrk
I think all the departure table screen I've ever seen have run Windows.

Always wondered what the hell, especially since it doesn't even seem to
provide stability.

------
mtgx
Why not just use low-cost Android tablets, since those displays only need very
basic full screen apps anyway?

~~~
bkm
Or even on those portable Android sticks. I fear this will commoditize the
Digital Signage industry on the long run, Android devices need zero support
and a fool can install the apps with the Play store. Plus Android devices
often have very sophisticated GPUs, making them suitable for visuals.

------
esolyt
Well, the short answer is they don't know about other operating systems or
what an operating system is.

------
ksec
I think most of these would have worked on a Display connected to AppleTV.

------
aviraldg
For the same reasons why companies still use Microsoft Windows.

------
michaelfeathers
A friend of mine collects photos of monitor and advertising display fails in
airports. He's been doing it for years and he has a large collection. I think
that over 95% are Windows.

------
AsmMAn
I want to get into real market to see how many unstable is Windows. I really,
really want to see that.

~~~
dmaselbas
Not so much windows, but if you run your app in ie, you will run out of memory
in a day or so. I had auto reboot every night at midnight. On the other hand I
have run a small tomcat server on a cheap hp box running bare minimum win7,
and it literally ran for years without an issue.

------
blahbl4hblahtoo
8.1 allows you to boot into a single metro app... at least the desktop won't
interrupt...

------
will3942
It gets even worse, an airport's departures time table ran Windows and just
showed the desktop, causing me to have to walk to the other end of the
terminal to check the Gate number. (source:
[https://twitter.com/Will3942/status/394915432660234242](https://twitter.com/Will3942/status/394915432660234242))

