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.