Linux-based Internet Cafe

MeatProduct

Points taken guys, thanks very much. I have done some research and it is the gamers that we will be aiming for to bring in the money. Of course I migt be proven completely wrong there but from a bit of market research it's the gamers that will be coming to this place. I don't think thell'll have much to complain about either:

Counter Strike
Battlefield 1942
Red Alert 2
Warcraft 3 + The Frozen Throne

Linux Native:
Quake 2
Quake 3
Unreal Tournament 2004 64bit
Doom 3
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Americas Army

I think if Valve port Halflife to Linux then for many gamers it will be an easy decision to switch to Linux. Which of course helps the Linux case for this internet cafe.

Nick

Emboss

Nick

I don't mean to be rude but you asked for advice...

echomadman runs an internet cafe...

Sico afaik is heavily involved in a large amount of them not sure if he's hardware or software probably both but runs a huge chain in Dublin.....

these two have given you solid advice and you have just chosen to completley ignore it.


why bother asking for advice in the first place?

when you're selling up if the lease is cheap i'll buy it off you.

sovtek

Meat,
I'm an admin at a large cafe in Dublin.
I've often considered moving to Linux as well.
We used to do webhosting and mail accounts so we have some Linux servers around.
The problem I see with it is mainly Word (and being unfamiliar with OpenOffice I'm not sure if you can edit a Word doc in OpenOffice or not) and gamers.
Unlike some have suggested their are plenty of gamers. While many Irish gamers might be getting their own computers and connections...there are many Romanians and Chinese who do use internet cafe's for gaming.
Unfortunetly the owners aren't bothered about gamers so i'd move in a second if the Word problem weren't a factor.

The_Conductor

You can edit ms word documents with open office.

Shane

sovtek

Originally posted by smccarrick
You can edit ms word documents with open office.

Shane

Didn't know you could.
I guess the real problem is then creating them.

echomadman

there are many Romanians and Chinese

I asked him where he was setting up, if its dublin then the population makes getting a gamer customer base easy, If its outside dublin it really is a different story.

Of course CV's and Word will be an issue but there will be one member of staff that will be walking around the cafe the whole time to offer assistance to anyone. Not a perfect solution but one that will address the issue.

Depending on your opening hours this could mean up to 3 additional staff members, thats a significant increase in wage costs per week. min wage is now 7 per hour, a premises to fit the amount of PCs you are talking about will not be cheap to rent. Its amazing how fast your running costs escalate
Not trying to discourage you but I've seen a lot of cafes go under in the last year. It sounds like you are inviting a lot of potential pitfalls very early on.
Good luck anyway whatever you decide to do.

echomadman

quote:

---

Originally posted by smccarrick
You can edit ms word documents with open office.

Shane

---

Didn't know you could.
I guess the real problem is then creating them.

you can do both, but its not an exact science, formatting *always* goes awry.

Abiword is a much better replacement for Word imo, but still not 100%

sovtek

Originally posted by echomadman
I asked him where he was setting up, if its dublin then the population makes getting a gamer customer base easy, If its outside dublin it really is a different story.

Ach! Very true...sorry I've only ever lived in Dublin and tend to forget the rest of the country.

Depending on your opening hours this could mean up to 3 additional staff members, thats a significant increase in wage costs per week. min wage is now 7 per hour, a premises to fit the amount of PCs you are talking about will not be cheap to rent. Its amazing how fast your running costs escalate
Not trying to discourage you but I've seen a lot of cafes go under in the last year. It sounds like you are inviting a lot of potential pitfalls very early on.
Good luck anyway whatever you decide to do.

So very true. We are running at a significant loss at the moment and have to make some serious changes.
Also if you want employees to go out of their way to help customers you are going to have to pay them more than minimum wage.

sovtek

Originally posted by echomadman
you can do both, but its not an exact science, formatting *always* goes awry.

Abiword is a much better replacement for Word imo, but still not 100%

Actually this got me curious and I'm testing it at the moment.
After formatting a floppy on a Fedora machine and copying a Word 2000 doc (from a Win98 machine) and Fedora won't read it. Despite formating using msdos file system.
The 98 machine can read the Fedora formatted disk though. Anyway off topic.

MeatProduct

Originally posted by Emboss
Nick

I don't mean to be rude but you asked for advice...

echomadman runs an internet cafe...

Sico afaik is heavily involved in a large amount of them not sure if he's hardware or software probably both but runs a huge chain in Dublin.....

these two have given you solid advice and you have just chosen to completley ignore it.


why bother asking for advice in the first place?

when you're selling up if the lease is cheap i'll buy it off you.

Apologies to Echomadman and Sico if it seemed like I was completely ignoring your advice. I'm not at all, I did actually say "points taken" and very much value your views. It was not my intention or desire to ignore your comments and I don't think that was communicated in my post above. However, Emboss seems to think that I am at fault so I am very sorry if I have offended anyone, it was honestly not my intent.
My point was that we will be aiming at gamers.

Nick

Typedef

Shut up or go away.

MeatProduct

Hi Echomadman,

Sorry for the delay. My cat was killed by a car today so I haven't been online much today.

The internet cafe will be in the south of the country. Can't pin it down anymore than that though I'm afraid.

Thanks for the staffing advice, that's the biggest cost involved and if that goes up by a lot then there's hardly any point in opening up in the first place. I'm aiming for 2 members of staff at all times as a minimum. I'll be there at peak times also.

Thank you indeed,

Nick

Capt'n Midnight

Originally posted by echomadman
you can do both, but its not an exact science, formatting *always* goes awry.

Abiword is a much better replacement for Word imo, but still not 100%

Then again tables usually go to mush when exchanging between word 97 and word 2000..

No openoffice does not do everything that word/excel/powerpoint can do. But since most users don't use 90% of the freatures and each build is better than the last. Really unless you have complex legacy documents it should do what you want - just remember to change the default "save as" file types to microsoft.

The_Conductor

FAT 16?

Red Alert

Linux is easier to lock down and also you have the option of using something like BpBatch to re-image the hard disks at every bootup. It also works on win 98 but won't do NTFS systems like Win2k and XP.

EDIT: You could do a linux setup with a Windows 2000 Server for Word, or use Cross over office from www.codeweavers.com. It works perfectly and allows you to install and run office 97, 2000 and XP.

MeatProduct

Originally posted by sovtek
Meat,
I'm an admin at a large cafe in Dublin.
I've often considered moving to Linux as well.
We used to do webhosting and mail accounts so we have some Linux servers around.
The problem I see with it is mainly Word (and being unfamiliar with OpenOffice I'm not sure if you can edit a Word doc in OpenOffice or not) and gamers.
Unlike some have suggested their are plenty of gamers. While many Irish gamers might be getting their own computers and connections...there are many Romanians and Chinese who do use internet cafe's for gaming.
Unfortunetly the owners aren't bothered about gamers so i'd move in a second if the Word problem weren't a factor.

Hi Sovtek,

Many thanks for posting here. As you said, Word is probably the biggest problem. I will more than likely run MS Office via Crossover on a few machines for those customers that really want to use Word. It's a big issue, I'm treating it as such but I don't think it's enough to hold me back from going with Linux.
I had no idea there was a Romanian and Chinese market in Dublin. There might be a similiar situation in the south (to a far lesser degree of course).
That's a pity about the owners not being bothered by gamers because from mwhat I hear there is still a market in Dublin for a really good gaming venue.

Thanks for your thoughts,

Nick

PS: If this goes ahead you are all invited to the opening party. Just don't come planning to use Word;)

MeatProduct

Captain, just found that option in Open Office myself yesterday, about changing the default save as. That's a god send really.

Red Alert, thank you for mentioning BpBatch, that's a bit of software I expect I will be using rather a lot.

Nick

Typedef

Originally posted by smccarrick
FAT 16?

Is that like supposed to format joke: ?

MeatProduct

Typedef,

For a benchmark I can really only go with what is said on the forums on the Transgaming sites. I would like to do trials on WineX, it might save me a lot of hassle in the long run. I'll be looking into that next week. Unfortunately Transgaming aren't willing to give me a deal on 20 WineX licenses, $99 upfront and $60 per year for updates.

Nick

Emboss

d

flamegrill

I Shant hand out any warnings, I'll close the thread and ban you all.

Play nice.

Paul

MeatProduct

I have noted the names of everyone who has contributed to this thread and will be sending invitations for the launch party to you all, should this internet cafe ever get off the ground. I hope this discussion can continue in a civil manner.

Many thanks for all your contributions so far,

Nick

PS: Bring your own OS to the party

nadir

woo souds great.

ssh

I'm the sysadmin for more than one cafe in the city centre. We ran Linux on a few machines for a while before I started there. People didn't use them, and would prefer to wait until a windows machine became free. The same applies to the macs, unfortunately.

We have openoffice on the PCs. For the most part, it's fine. If it didn't display an OpenOffice Logo when it opened up and it saved in Word 2000 format by default, I'd say most people wouldn't notice. Sadly, they do as it is.

As has been demonstrated by some cafes, if you can keep the cost per hour sufficiently low, people will be fairly flexible in terms of what they use.

Finally, make sure your staff can bridge the gap between user and Linux. Like really. That's probably the most important thing here.

EDIT: Also, battlefield ran like a pig under winex last time I checked. It was quite stable though.

Typedef

I'd almost lean towards having something like Mandrake, with all other Window Managers cut out and maybe even with familiar icons placed in the quickstart bar, so that average idot (x) could click on an icon he/she recognised as being the 'internet' icon and have a browser appear.

Which browser and the underlying OS, shouldnt' make a huge difference.

So basically you place an ie6 icon on the desktop and quick start bar of each client, it's just the icon mind, since the box runs Linux and the browser that gets execv()'d is probably something like Mozilla or Firefox.

This way your typical client still gets to navigate the with a familar look'n'feel, while you get to run your OS of choice.

I'd say that would bridge the knowledge gap for alot of users that ssh was just speaking about.

Essentially you'd want to devote quite a bit of time to making the desktop as intuitive as possibe to your average Windows monkey.

There is some sort of Window Manager for X, which aims to totally replicate the look'n'feel of an Xp desktop.

Certainly, that wouldn't be a bad starting point.

MeatProduct

Thank you ssh and Typedef,

As said it is an important point that the staff are capable enough. It is something I will take great care of when interviewing the staff.

It's a pity that people didn't really take to Linux in your cafe, that is of some concern to me. Although, as Typedef said, this can be somewhat minimized by using familiar icons and possibly an XP theme, although I haven't come across a really good XP theme yet.

Thank you,

Nick

Capt'n Midnight

Originally posted by Typedef
Is that like supposed to format joke: ?

Must have meant FAT32
hey but FAT12 is always good for a laugh..

How about a few KVM switches - cheap barebones system is cheaper than a good digital LDC monitor.

- or running thin clients - only if the policy is block people installing stuff on the PC's
Windows 2000K server for internet explorer - 'course you can't save anything unless you share the local drive and use a different login for each pc
Is there a TS client for Linux (there is for citrix but that is a tad more expensive)

maxheadroom

Originally posted by Capt'n Midnight
Is there a TS client for Linux (there is for citrix but that is a tad more expensive)

There is - here's an article about it (two parts):

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7418
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7419

The project is at http://www.ltsp.org

ssh

I remember looking into that a while back.

There's an internet cafe addon for it here:

http://akinimod.sourceforge.net/icafe.html

which is an incredibly cost effective way of expanding a cafe with low cost terminals. Pretty nice. Not for us though...

pickarooney

On the IE issue, has anyone ever used a tabbed browser and not loved it? I've had numerous computer-illiterate people sit down at my computer and ask where was internet. Once I showed them the icon there were never any further questions.
Well there may have been some questions but I couldn't hear them through the screams as they ran down the street in fear.. :P

I installed an XP theme in KDE once for a laugh. It looked just like XP and wasn't much of a laugh come to think of it.

Screenshot here if you're interested.

sceptre

That's nice pickarooney:D

The XP setup on my laptop looks just like OSX.

I'm not too sure whether it would be a factor at all but running a net cafe almost totally on Linux might let some of that cushy corporate training stuff pass you by. Given that you've not mentioned this as part of the market you're aiming for I may just be flopping a red herring on the desk though. In any case, Crossover Office would allow you to have this one on the go as well.

MeatProduct

Thanks very much for all those comments. I've seen that XP theme and it looks good, just the transparency issue needs to be sorted with it.

The training is a good point. It is something that will be used as a source of income. If I go for Linux I really, really want to avoid any Microsoft licensing. Of course that's gonna be pretty bloody hard to do if we're gearing towards the corporate market. It's likely to be the middle-aged home user that we will be aiming our training at. Just the basics; internet browsing and the like, stuff that is fairly common between platforms.

Many thanks,

Nick

ColmOT [MSFT]

I have to admit that I'm impressed with this...

http://www.xpde.com/

Typedef

That's the link I was talking about.

Totally, run that wm, and your users by and large won't, know, the difference.

pickarooney

One thing that I think nobody has mentioned is the number of websites that simply can't be viewed (or display very badly) in non-MS browsers. I don't know if anyone here has done an in-depth comparison but there are quite a lot of no-go areas (badly-written html pages if you prefer) for Mozilla, Opera etc.

mneylon

Originally posted by pickarooney
One thing that I think nobody has mentioned is the number of websites that simply can't be viewed (or display very badly) in non-MS browsers. I don't know if anyone here has done an in-depth comparison but there are quite a lot of no-go areas (badly-written html pages if you prefer) for Mozilla, Opera etc.

That's simply bad coding/design..

echomadman

That's simply bad coding/design..

thats simply pointing out the obvious without offering a solution

I mentioned it in the other thread on this in technology, Apparantly Meatproduct doesnt see it as a major problem,

Most MSN related sites will be missing a lot of functionality though.

the chat-monkeys will be your biggest problem imo though.

ssh

Well gaim does all of the protocols very nicely. It just doesn't do anything fancy like webcams or chat.

Typedef

Doesn't gnome-meeting do something like that?

theciscokid

yup, does it quite well

1.0 has big improvements over .98

has the member database also for looking up profiles etc..

pickarooney

aMSN works fine with MSN. GAIM, Kopete, all work no problem for me.
Do people use webcams much in cybercafés?

theciscokid

well quite a few do, but theres the msn's mgr cam / windows problem.. wont work with anything b4 XP, so yahoo or maybe netmeeting, but netmeeting tis messy..

aMSN work great i use that myself, kopete and gAIM are orrible i think, they still haven't perfected yahoo services, always glitchy and buggy to use with them

BenH

Originally posted by pickarooney

I installed an XP theme in KDE once for a laugh. It looked just like XP and wasn't much of a laugh come to think of it.

Screenshot here if you're interested.

I was going to mention the Xp-ish load screens in Kde3.2.X, which are good for a laugh. But after taking a look at that screenshot all I can do is scream at the wrongness

BenH

Originally posted by echomadman
thats simply pointing out the obvious without offering a solution

How about pointing them at the mozilla foundation who will fix broken web design for nada.

Of course the websites owners have to care enough to actually get it sorted out.

McClane

I am thoroughly sickened by some of the responces to this post. Windows is an alright Operating System, nothing wrong with it except its made to be idiot friendly.

Linux is made to be a personalised Operating System and YOU decide what it looks like, what it can do, what its main purpose is. There is Nothing you cannot customise on a Linux Box.

Anyways back to the post.

1. Nick u r wrong bout WineX. You can get the CVS version for free and with a little customisation it works as good or in some cases, it works better then the actual paid for version. It simply costs u a little more effort. There are several people i am aware of who get a higher FPS with the CVS version than with the Binary one.

2. Why would the public complain about not having Windows in a cafe ? Most of the public wouldn't even notice there was a difference if you made the Mozilla icon look like a big bloated blue E. Well ...maybe they might notice that it didn't crash on them :P
Lets face it, the majority of people r happy with a browser, checking their hotmail account and looking at some pictures of topless women.

3. Will it turn people away? why would it ?

4. Would it get support from the Linux community (if the Linux community got support from the internet cafe of course)?
If you mean would people help u out with getting it set up i would be more than willing to, cept i'm not from Dublin but i would definetaly make time to come down and give you a hand. Plus if you get Steam in the Cafe my visits to other Lan's will cease.

Nick i think its a Class idea, not just for a business but a great step forward for Open-Source. You know in other Countries (Brazil 1 i know of) Linux Cafe's aren't that rare.

McClane

MS Office is alright but theres nothing GREAT about it. And Very few people would care, for god sake u just type your crap in and save it! Almost every Office Suite has all/most of the features of MS Office and they don't have that ****ing paperclip.

Internet Explorer is the WORST web browser in the world, why in gods name would people miss it ? and even if they DID miss it you can install IE on Linux! You can also install Ms Office on Linux and almost anything else people miss. Hell i'll write a script that randomly crashes the computer if people miss Windows that much.

Steam, Cheating Death, Team-Speak etc etc All work on Linux. Theres no need for the All-seeing Eye as Linux has an equivalent and just think for a moment. The greatest Games developers in the world have put out their last Game engine plus their new one for Linux.

I run Steam, Warcraft 3 and Jedi Knight 2 on linux without any loss of speed or ease of use.

I also run Quake3 and Enemy Territory natively.

MeatProduct

Greetings McClane,

Many thanks for that post, very helpful.

Originally posted by McClane
1. Nick u r wrong bout WineX. You can get the CVS version for free and with a little customisation it works as good or in some cases, it works better then the actual paid for version. It simply costs u a little more effort. There are several people i am aware of who get a higher FPS with the CVS version than with the Binary one.

Well I'm very glad indeed that I was wrong! I had thought about the CVS version but let it go since I assumed that it would not offer the same support as the subscription version of WineX.
As long as the CVS version will work then the extra work to get it going is no trouble at all. Many thanks for that, it was something I was concerned about.

2. Why would the public complain about not having Windows in a cafe ? Most of the public wouldn't even notice there was a difference if you made the Mozilla icon look like a big bloated blue E. Well ...maybe they might notice that it didn't crash on them :P
Lets face it, the majority of people r happy with a browser, checking their hotmail account and looking at some pictures of topless women.

Great

3. Will it turn people away? why would it ?

I can't think of any good reason, was just posing the question.

4. Would it get support from the Linux community (if the Linux community got support from the internet cafe of course)?
If you mean would people help u out with getting it set up i would be more than willing to, cept i'm not from Dublin but i would definetaly make time to come down and give you a hand. Plus if you get Steam in the Cafe my visits to other Lan's will cease.

This will be somewhere in the south. Many thanks for your offer to help out. I have set aside funds for this. We would pay for your travel, food and a place to stay while you were here. After that we could work out a way of paying you for your services; web space, mail, etc... possibly some cash too if you can help with the networking.
Steam will have to work, if that doesn't work then there's a good chance that Linux will be dropped.
I'm ordering a prototype machine this week and getting all the games to start testing next week.

Nick i think its a Class idea, not just for a business but a great step forward for Open-Source. You know in other Countries (Brazil 1 i know of) Linux Cafe's aren't that rare.

It certainly is a big step for open source. It will be made clear in the internet cafe that it is open source, that angle will be promoted.

Many thanks for your thoughts.

Nick

Typedef

Originally posted by McClane
MS Office is alright but theres nothing GREAT about it. And Very few people would care, for god sake u just type your crap in and save it!

BenH

Originally posted by MeatProduct
Steam will have to work, if that doesn't work then there's a good chance that Linux will be dropped.
I'm ordering a prototype machine this week and getting all the games to start testing next week.

Steam works without a hitch with WineX 3.3, which should have official release any time now. The only issue you might face is that WineX is a port of DirectX 8.1, and although work is underway on the dx9 port, games that require dx9 dont really play so well.

electrofelix

Originally posted by MeatProduct

Well I'm very glad indeed that I was wrong! I had thought about the CVS version but let it go since I assumed that it would not offer the same support as the subscription version of WineX.
As long as the CVS version will work then the extra work to get it going is no trouble at all. Many thanks for that, it was something I was concerned about.

Meant to make a post earlier mentioning that was well. Only thing I would say is read the license carefully, I couldn't spot any restrictions on commerical usage of WineX when I looked before, but that doesn't mean it might not be there. AFAICT its distributed under 1 license but it just might be under a dual license like MySQL which would require you to purchase it if you plan on using it for a commerical reason.


If you can use the CVS version without having to pay the license (I actually hope you can since they wouldn't discuss a deal with you), paying the subscription fees for a few copies would give you access to try and influence support for certain games to be developed first. I imagine that this would be useful to you since you would want certain games to be supported to have them available for your gamers.


The last thing I would say is that if you are going down the line of using Linux + WineX for the cafe machines, make sure that the gaming population that your aiming at is happy with the selection of games that are supported and can be played, otherwise all that use of Open Source software is going to be a waste of time if the gamers all stay at home.