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Software The Internet

Free Software for Cybercafe Management? 30

Posted by Cliff from the serving-up-coffee-chips-dips-and-html dept.
SantiagoRoza asks: "Hello, Slashdot. I am asking for your collaboration because someone I know needs a software to manage his (small) Internet cafe. Ideally, we're looking for software that is free/libre and multilingual (with a Spanish version), but I'd gladly take free/gratis and English-only. Additionally, the software has to work on Windows. After searching the 'net, I've only been able to find CafeTimer, which doesn't impress me. Nothing else out there looks like it will support more than 2-3 computers. Might you all have other suggestions?"
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Free Software for Cybercafe Management? More

Free Software for Cybercafe Management?

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  • SCO licensing (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:30PM (#9952286)
    Ideally, we're looking for software that is free/libre

    That leaves out Windows (copyright of Microsoft), Linux (copyright of SCO) and MacOS (copyright of Apple).

    You might want to get your friends to write a new completely free operating system from scratch, that's really your only choice at the moment.

  • Windows??? and Linux too... :) (Score:5, Informative)

    by advocate_one ( 662832 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:35PM (#9952354)
    CybOrg, the Cybercafe Organizer [sourceforge.net] and it's Spanish/English to boot!!! what more can you ask for???
  • Are you looking for something that will allow you to manage users and give them passwords and stuff to log on, then look to see how long they used the connection and that kind of thing? To manage your subscribers? Some friends of mine had a plan to sell to cafe-owners who wanted to have the Internet available and part of that plan involved Knoppix. I am not positive how they intended for it to work... And since Knoppix is really a version of Linux I would imagine that it would not meet your requirement

  • You gotta be kidding... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Korgan ( 101803 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:38PM (#9952404) Homepage
    Couldn't find anything? Didn't try very hard. :|

    One search alone generates quite a few apps that fit into your stated requirements. I'm sure if I tried I could find you a lot more.

    http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=cafe&section=projec ts&Go.x=5&Go.y=14 [freshmeat.net]

  • "has to?" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:38PM (#9952405) Homepage Journal
    the software has to work on Windows

    Ok, most of the time I see this as a requirement there is an obvious reason. Sometimes there is an existing system component that is in windows already. Sometimes the target is all platforms and windows can't be left out. Usually you can hold all the linux zealots back with a very good reason why running on windows is a valid requirement.

    In this case, I do not see such a reason. Why can't your friend's cybercafe run on linux? If you did run on linux not only would this problem of cybercafe software be relatively trivial, but the other advantages including security, would be numerous obvious and unecessary to enumerate. I'm not saying that there isn't a reason the cybercafe must run windows, I'm just wondering what it is. And saying the customers want it or need it in some fashion is not a good reason. Neither is lack or knowledge on the proprietor's part.

    Oh, and to answer the question, there really isn't free cybercafe software for windows. Even the pay software is easilly cracked. The best bet is hardware control. you can get dongles with timers that cut off the mice/keyboards/monitors and allow them to switch on for set amounts of time. Some are coin operated also.

    Also, with vnc you can make a hacky solution. Just set a passwords on all the boxen. Then to unlock them vnc into them and do the deed. Set a timer and lock them again when time is up.

    • Re:"has to?" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by itwerx ( 165526 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:44PM (#9952463) Homepage
      Why can't your friend's cybercafe run on linux?

      Er, games? :)
      • Er, wine? :)

        Cedega runs Steam (and many many many other games). With better fps's than Windows. So I don't think this argument holds water!
    • Rather than all the trouble of VNCing in and setting timers on the local boxen or applying hardware dongles (which can be easily unplugged, btw), remember one thing:
      This is for a CyberCafe... i.e. everyone there is using the internet. All of this traffic is (hopefully) going through a router which you control.
      Set it up so that it masqs/routes traffic on a per-IP basis, instead of per-subnet (very easy to do with IPTables/IPChains). When the time is up, simply remove that IP from the list.

      Bam, the luser'
    • >Why can't your friend's cybercafe run on linux?

      Maybe his friends have no Linux/Unix experience?

      • WTF does that have to do with it? (Score:4, Informative)

        by leonbrooks ( 8043 ) <SentByMSBlast-No ... .brooks.fdns.net> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:15PM (#9954724) Homepage
        I whomped up a Linux-based cafe system called lincaf, going to be uploaded somewhere public soon (weeks) and it's GPLed.
        • While we were testing it, two girls who had never seen Linux before trotted up, sat down, and edited up their CVs, one on OpenOffice Writer and one on KWord, and they never noticed that it wasn't MS-Word they were using. They were especially happy to be able to turn their CVs into PDF on the spot.
        • While some sites require MSIE (and we don't provide it), one customer was delighted to report that while his bank rarely worked for him using MSIE at another establishment related to the one using lincaf, it worked every time using FireFox and telling it to lie about who it was.
        • Another random customer who deals with GIS was absolutely floored that we were able to provide GRASS [grass.itc.it] for him in a matter of seconds. No, hah, hah, not that [wikipedia.org] kind of grass, got it off your chest now?

          He added GRASS-on-Linux to his resume and got a job the next day (with a firm that, oddly enough, doesn't use Linux).

        This Linux system, despite being highly prototypical, is already far easier to maintain than the comparable MS-Windows systems at peer establishments, which regularly break, and regularly hand out free time despite being heavily locked down and Sherrif carded.
        • This has been mentioned, but one huge use of CyberCafes is online gaming. Which doesnt work nearly as well (if at all) on linux.
          • Linux's RMS (Real Market Share, as opposed to pre-installed box counts) is probably up over 10%, which will start to interest the game producers. More and more games have Linux clients, and more of them are working either under WINE or WINEX. This all adds up to a greater Linux presence in the gaming universe.
        • I wasn't talking about customers, but about admins or whoever was running the place. Suggesting somebody who probably never had any experience with linux to set up and manage a network of linux boxes just doesn't sound right to me.
          • ...but with Linux (and for that matter many of the BSDs now as well) it's fairly straightforward to ship a kit on a CD (or hard disk) which auto-installs the entire network with a known (set of) configuration(s). Plug it into the server, boot, wait for it to install, boot everything else, you're live.

            It's kind of moving the install side of the administration from the site to the support company rather than waiving it entirely, but from a customer's perspective the difference is moot. I routinely manage Lin

  • Openkiosk works w/both Lin and Win. (Score:5, Informative)

    by geohump ( 782273 ) <geohump&gmail,com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:46PM (#9952483) Journal
    http://openkiosk.sourceforge.net/ This package may do what you want. It has clients for both Windows and Linux boxes. I believe that it may need a Linux server to control things, but I'm not sure.
  • There were a lot of good ideas when a similar question was asked a couple hours ago [slashdot.org].

  • Make it. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JVert ( 578547 ) <corganbilly@hotmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:10PM (#9952752) Journal
    Replace your windows shell with some nice snazzy fullscreen interface, use flash even. All you need to do is setup some login system, username and password would... work, but fingerpring scanner would be cooler (which still needs the login as a backup). Launching games is as simple as daemon command prompt mounts. But MOST importantly copy all the profile data from their account (stored on a server) so they dont have to rebuild their keybinds. And safe the profile when they are dont. By profile I mean the .cfg files for the different games, not the windows profile.

    Another thing, decorate the hell out of the place. Gameworks is really cool and I bet you can get some really great looking stuff if your creative about it.

    Chicks serving drinks in elf suits is important too, I only bring this up last because I assume you already planned for that. But in case you didn't...
  • I've done a lot of backpacking and as such have used 100s of cyber-cafes... My advice: Use pen/paper.

    Almost every system I've seen that keeps track and/or limits the the amount of time you have on a computer is cumbersome, makes it difficult to use the computer, crashes once in awhile and in general just causes headaches...

    The best cafes are the ones that mark the time down when you start and when you finish on some paper. No hassles, no problems, much simpler.

  • I don't know of any neat packages, but try some shopping-cart software on an internal webserver. People buy an OpenVPN key (your server provides downloads for Windows, Linux, and Mac). Expiration is built into SSL keys, though it's unfortunately on the order of days, not minutes, so you might have to write something custom there. The VPN hooks them into the external network, giving them unrestricted access to the outside world.

    This can all be reasonably web-based, and what's more, can work with whatever

  • Am I the only one... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Hello, Slashdot. I am asking for your collaboration because someone I know needs...

    Am I the only one who started reading this and thinking that somehow one of those Nigerian scams made it onto /.?

    -"Zow"

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