Airport advertising sign, looks like they forgot to make the looping video full screen.
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Tbf it is a lot easier to just leave the DE running than try to tweak a non DE env, especially for media playing.
Also it is probably easier for whatever IT technician to use this thing, update content, do troubleshooting, etc.
I imagine an IT technician running around pressing keys on real physical keyboards connected to all machines, instead of connecting via ssh, or even using Ansible.
Well, then they hire based on paying the lowest, then yeah, you get amateurs who don’t know shit. Can’t tell you how many situations I’ve encountered in environments like government, educational, etc. facilities where I.T. is run by the cheapest labor available. And the net result is everything runs piecemeal and haphazardly. Oh, and the average user has WAY too much privilege because they have no idea how to properly restrict access. I see it often.
I’m willing to cry over all this, I cannot understand why it works like that. It’s not cheaper, and even if you’re optimising costs, it’s still cheaper to hire one competent guy than ten incompetent ones.
You’re being logical. And you’re looking at the big picture. In budget allocated resources, they can only look at their own small box, and not think on a larger scale. Also, the people making these decisions are usually dimwits too.
Yeah this was what I was trying to get across to the other reply here. That tech is probably using VNC or something, rather than a shell over ssh. And they follow what I imagine are very bad docs from whoever built this thing, click on this, click on that, click loop video, click enable fullscreen.
And that was probably a requirement for the devs to deliver it that way. Because they know what kind of techs that customer hires to maintain these things. And anyone comfortable with Linux and the CLI is not applying for this technician job. (lol I’m making a lot of assumptions here. AITA?) This is the story I have created in my mind about this broken kiosk and I’m sticking to it.
I’m totally with you on this!
I disagree. Using a DE is more 'intuitive', but using CLI commands I way easier and effective, if you know the commands. A couple of scripts can run on cron schedules and you can just forget about it until it breaks (if it ever breaks).
For a dev/engineer/linux user, I agree. For the IT technician who probably mostly works with Windows fixing printer drivers, who every now and then has to go change the ad content on the kiosks, he probably curses “that damn Linux” every time. I’m betting for him the CLI is not easier.