I am working on a kiosk project for my company that is going to entail using a magnetic card stripe reader (debit and credit card type) as well as a pin pad (both USB interface). We are making operating system decisions right now and Linux is the preferred OS, however there are concerns over how difficult it is going to be to find/write drivers for the mag card reader and the pin pad. None of us are programmers so its going to be outsourced if we go this route, so I am hoping someone has done something similar to what I am looking at and can provide me some information on how challenging this is going to be and maybe some resources to look into further. Thanks in advance to anyone responding.

EDIT: I would also appreciate any feedback from folks who have written drivers from scratch for devices about how difficult it is and what kind of cooperation is needed from the manufacturer (if any)

I've only used 1 type of magnetic card reader and it was the PS/2 pass though type. The reader was plugged into your Keyboard PS/2 port and then the keyboard was plugged into the reader. No drivers where needed as the reader was just "typing" the numbers. I would bet that the USB reader would work the same, it would plug into the USB port and just act as keyboard. If that is the case then it would work on any OS that supports USB Keyboards without the need for any drivers. If drivers are needed for the reader you have choosen I would look for another reader .

Hoping I don't sound too much like a newb here, but I want to be clear on this one.

The card reader we are looking at, is an emulated keyboard device, so it will work the same as what you have described above. Can you tell me what kind of hoops I would need to jump through if we were to use RedHat on the box this is plugged into? Is it as simple as plugging it in and letting the OS recognize it as a keyboard?

Btw, I really appreciate your response, any information is extremely helpful!

It is just a simple as pluging it in and letting the OS see it as a keyboard. I don't think you have to do anything special to get a USB keyboard to work under linux but I've never done it. I think your safe though