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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?"
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.
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...