Am I crazy in thinking that the shop I was in that has CentOS 3 running their self checkouts should have a more up to date and currently supported OS? These are brand new self checkouts (the shop has had them for about a year now, but you get my point.)
It’s a genuine question. Am I wrong in thinking that using this OS on a self checkout is a terrible idea? (FWIW this shop is an international retailer)
I have no stake in the shop or anything. I just happened to be there when they had to reboot a self checkout and I noticed the OS version as I was going by.
CentOS 7, released with Linux 3, only went out of support a month ago.
Expect to see it pop up everywhere the coming five to six years. The sort of people who still run CentOS generally aren't the sort of people who upgrade their software unless they absolutely have to. It's like those ATMs running that obscure version of Windows XP and 7 (although the Windows 7 Embedded release will still receives updates for a few more months)), you deploy an OS onto them, kill any accessible port you can find, and just let it do it's thing for a couple of years.
The only reason the DOS POS systems are being phased out is that the hardware they run on can no longer be replaced easily, and even then Dosbox is sometimes used to run POS software.
Then there's Dutch trains from NS running the time schedules on Vista until a few years ago...