Linux browsing center help me out

[ajay.ar]

hi guys , i am planning to open a linux browsing center please throw some lights on this; which OS; other options; suggestions, thanks in advance
mail at

 

[horndude]

Are you talking about an internet cafe type place where people can come in and surf the internet?If so Id suggest one relatively fast PC and the rest can be pretty minimal.Use the fast PC as a router and server and the rest as terminals.Any distro will work, im a slackware person myself, its simple, straightforward and well supported.

Id also suggest minimal GUI's for the terminals and very limited access on those machines, that will help with security issues and prevent lots of problems, and also keep the overhead down.You could even use your own custom live cd to run the terminals with and not even need hard drives for the terminals, just ethernet.video and probably a minimum of 64mb or RAM in each.

 

[ajay.ar]

thanks man, and how will be the system's browsing speed as compared to the MS windows one's. and also i want to give a good GUI, and a easy to learn user interface as people are unfamiliar with these version of linux, how do u think red hat , and speed is very important

 

[intercodes]

ajay.ar,

Wow..linux browsing cafe...cool

Good gui , use Fedora Core 3 . It has good gui and it comes with Firefox 1.0 installed. I dont find any difference in internet speeds between win and linux.Except for that now i use firefox, which is awesome and the overall security too. No need to bother abt these damn adware/spyware/virus stuff.

Sign
codes

 

[horndude]

Well if all your going to allow is browsing I wouldnt worry about the GUI other than using one thats small,light,and fast.By doing the way Im sugesting only one PC needs to be fast, it will be doing all the work, the rest of the machines which your users will be using wont be running much software, just enough to work.The browser would run on the fast machine and the display would be exported to each terminal over ethernet.That way you eliminate the users having much options.Now if your going to offer more than just internet access you will have to think about some other possibilities.Still, the way Im suggesting assuming a 1ghz/256mb RAM/10GB HD server/router PC and probably about 12 client machines which could be as little as pentium 100's with 16 or 32mb ram you keep your cost down, but still get decent performance.This is similar to what some libraries here in the US use.If your going to use linux you might as well take advantage of its multiuser and networking capabilities.I have a smaller version of this here at home, I have one fast machine and a couple others that act as terminals, the software like a browser runs on the fast machine, but the display is exported to each terminal, that way my terminals can be cheap.Its a basic client server setup or master slave if you want to look at it that way.The terminals dont have hard drives, just CDROM,video, and a small amount of RAM.

 

[mrdinkel]

I'll agree with slackware. If you really want to go minimalistic, use DamnSmallLinux (www.damnsmalllinux.org), as it uses the fluxbox gui. What Linux Distro you use depends solely on your purpose. Go to www.distrowatch.org if you want to do some research, as they have many descriptions of their capaciites.

Another thing is whether or not you want to be able to support MSN messenger. I haven't had success with it, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

Good Luck
- Josh

 

[ajay.ar]

hey horndude does ur idea consider user firing a print out, access to floppy drive ...
daily use software ie yahoo msngr, acrobat, office etc must be compitable does Fedora Core 3/slackware support this
and does linux support high end 3d games are there any games for linux and is there any support for game controllers

 

[horndude]

Yes my idea you could run a print server and have access to floppy drives,cdrom, and cdburner if you wanted

yes linux does some messenger services, not sure about yahoo.
OpenOffice is cross platform compatible and works quite well
PDF files are handled by linux just fine, as are postscript

There are a few games for linux, but nearly the selection windoze has.Highend, right now, armyops and doom3 is only ones I know of off the top of my head.There are probably another 20-30 other games available though.

game controllers, there's a few that work, mostly logitech

As a general rule if you want to play games stick with windoze and deal with that mess, video drivers and buggy code are constant problems with windows games in my experience, especially microsoft games.What few linux games Ive tried have been very very good and stable, no problems or crashes.

If your going to do this you will need to spend some time learning how to use linux, it takes some time to learn.Otherwise stay with windows and deal with the extra expenses involved.

The areas linux does really well in are business applications, networking, video-DVD,editing,playback,ripping, etc etc and automating just about anything.Its also the most popular in the server market.

 

[ajay.ar]

thanks horndude ill do that, how about going few systems in linux and few in windows does the cyber tools support monitoring both systems from server if so what would be the ideal setup.
and how about going with AMD

 

[ajay.ar]

Hey i am trying a new idea seeing the gaming thurst how about going for a dual boot windows and linux.