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Free Software for Cybercafe Management?
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?"
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.
CybOrg, the Cybercafe Organizer and it's Spanish/English to boot!!! what more can you ask for???
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
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 of "Compatibility with Windows". But, shouldn't there be some software out there that you could install that would allow you to administrate a Cyber Cafe that would allow Windows clients to connect?
:)
Pardon me for my most likely useless contribution to this discussion... Like I said, I don't have a clue what I'm talking about. All I know is they were gonna use Knoppix and install it on a computer for someone to use in a Cyber Cafe and make the computer a wireless access point that managed who logged on and who didn't.
Please expand on this if you have an idea what you are talking about!
BTW, Knoppix is a version of Linux that runs completely off of a CD. So you can plug it into virtually any x86 computer and boot into a fully-functional version of Linux with certain Apps pre-installed and ready-to-run.
I seem to remember that this was one of the only convenient ways that the US Army was able to demonstrate their 64-bit edition of "America's Army" by running it off of a Knoppix install. Could just be my imagination though.
my sig was dubm so i took it out.
when you own/run a cybercafe that provides internet access, you almost always are paying for it
Couldn't find anything? Didn't try very hard. :|
c ts&Go.x=5&Go.y=14
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§ion=proje
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.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
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.
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...
- 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 for him in a matter of seconds. No, hah, hah, not that kind of grass, got it off your chest now?
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.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).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
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.
/etc/skel.
This can all be reasonably web-based, and what's more, can work with whatever computers people bring in. Thus you don't have to be paranoid about keeping your network physically secure. You could even do this wirelessly -- I've seen this attempted, but (correct me if I'm wrong) things like T-Mobile are vulnerable to session hijacking. All someone needs is a Linux laptop, and there are very simple tools to set your MAC address to whatever you feel like.
As for your own, desktop computers? I'd use Linux boxes -- log the user out forceably once they leave the desk, wipe their home directory, replace it with a new copy of
One more way I've seen it done is a bit more aggressive -- removable hard drives. Everyone rents their own, something like $30 a month. If you don't pay, no guarentees about your data, but if you do, you get a copy of Win2k and whatever else you can find for yourself, plus T1-speed DSL. This means you don't need any software at all -- just a cabinet to lock the hard drives in.
Now, if you want to NOT allow the user to do whatever they want, you probably want to look for free software aimed at censoring net connections. You know -- only HTTP access through a passworded proxy. These do exist, but as a user, I hate them -- no bittorrent, no IM, nothing. As an admin, I'd prefer simple bandwidth throttling and disclaimers -- "If you 0wnz0r someone on our connection, we cannot be held liable. So please don't 0wnz0r people."
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Am I the only one who started reading this and thinking that somehow one of those Nigerian scams made it onto /.?
-"Zow"
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.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...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 Linux boxes in Kalgoorlie, 400km away, and have managed boxes in the USA (half a planet away), England and Germany (not much closer).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing