[Fsfe-uk] GNU/Free Internet Cafe / Was : Free internet (technologically)

[Subhi S Hashwa]

Hello All,

I got an email from Rama asking if we use free software in the
Internet Cafe which I run. I decided to email the mailing list too
with my field experience with Free software.

I run E-Corner Internet cafe and business centre in Waverley Train
Station in Edinburgh, and we currently have 15 IBM Workstations - nice
wee machines - every machines have dual boot into windows98 (Default)
and Redhat 9.

We recently had alot of publicity on how we are offering people choice
on operating system, previously dominated by Microsoft Windows
basically people have the choice if they want windows or linux, most
of our linux users come in to try it out, see the looks and feel of
it. in a "safe" enviroment, they dont have to worry about losing
files, installing things improperly etc and without trying it on their
own home pc.

We use a mixture of linux and freebsd servers for the backend and
network operations of the cafe. so far so good and we only had 3hours
downtime in 3 years of operation, something we're proud of and is
partly contibuted to our choice of *nix based servers.

Why dont we run _ONLY_ linux on the pcs.
We found that that linux offers almost all the facility needed by
average user to access the web. webbrowser, equivalent to MSN
Messenger/ Yahoo messenger etc. supports java, sound and flash, but at
the end of the day the users choose windows, they're more familiar
with it, many people panic if the browser doesnt look the same as
IE. but the biggest weakness in linux based system is there is no
equivalent of Microsoft Office. Openoffice is great I use it on
regular basis and I find it adiquite to my needs, but its not there
yet. MS Office is about 10 years old and is still contains IMHO the most
powerful wordprocessor and spreadsheet around today. to give you an
example we tried offering people Lotus smartsuite on windows they
still wanted MS Word which we had to get. Its the user that dictates
the software they want in enviroment such a my cafe.

Also when it comes to Multimedia etc people want to plug in a digital
camera, not worry about drivers or which USB driver + Mass storage to
use, etc, again its not 100% there yet. there is catching up to do. We
are also in no position to offer support and help on configuring linux
to connect a digital camera, most people have limited amount of time
which they want to get the task over and done in that period, they
dont have time to learn about how linux works with usb devices :)

As a simple answer, yes you can have an internet cafe fully running
on linux with free GNU/BSD software. The question is , will people
accept it ?

-Subhi

-- 
Best regards,
 Subhi                          mailto:address@hidden