Linux-based Internet Cafe

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.

MeatProduct

I'm waiting for a reply back from Transgaming about this now. Trying to find out the licensing costs involved for the CVS version of WineX. I'm quite certain that an internet cafe would be deemed as commercial usage.

Nick

PS: About the games, I'm quite happy with the selection since all the games I have selected are in the top 20 games played online. 3 of them in the top 5.