Modernising the ESRF control system with GNU/Linux

he ESRF control system is in the process of being modernised. The present contrsystem is based on VME, 10 MHz Ethernet, OS9, Solaris, HP-UX, NFS/RPC, Motif and C. The new control system will be based on compact PCI, 100 MHz Ethernet, Linux, Windows, Solaris, CORBA/IIOP, C++, Java and Python. The main frontend operating system will be GNU/Linux running on Intel/x86 and Motorola/68k. Linux will also be used on handheld devices for mobile control. This poster describes how GNU/Linux is being used to modernise the control system and what problems have been encountered so far