Caffe Bickford is now linuxcaffe, and you're invited !

[Austin]

On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 18:40 -0400, David J Patrick wrote:
> Rather than the typical rows of terminals, I plan to aquire a motly
> assortment of elderly thinkpad laptops

Cool.  Very durable machines.  Snazzy idea to use laptops too.

> (233mhz+)

Let's hope that's a really big "+".  You'd probably want 500 MHz minimum
for a local installation.  233 might be enough if you're running X over
ethernet from a master server though.

> spray painted by local artists

Sweet.

> These I plan to load with a common base, (debian ?)

Oh gawd, please don't start a flame war.

> a lighter desktop (XFWM ? Gnome 2.8+ if it will keep up)

I'd highly suggest something Windowsy.  This is your chance to welcome
Windows users, not make them feel embarrassed/alienated.  Gnome 2.8 is
surprisingly snappy.  Try out Ubuntu of you want to test a really sweet
default Gnome setup.  It's Debian done right.

> and to "top up" with apps based on user requirements

That would be cool too.  Solicit feedback or voting for applications.
"What is missing on our machines?"  Kinda like Mandrakeclub.  Maybe you
could feed the results to the media or linux distributors.

> save your home directory and settings

Locally or USB?  Locally would be so cool.  And it would make press for
sure.  "Toronto Internet Cafe sports digital storage lockers."

> on a sweet summers day, you can take the funky laptop and surf in the
> park across the street ! (we've got your credit card on file ;)

Woot.  All I can say is woot.

> great for web surfing, email, office apps, graphics work, music
> streaming (from our collection of indie artists)

The idea of having local music and local art available to take home is
really cool, and a great way to bring in non-linuxy people.

> -lousy for network gaming (inadequate graphics horsepower and no
> Windoze) so the legions of first person shooters will go elsewhere. 

You're like what... two blocks from Koreatown?  I'm sure gamers have got
their cybercafe gaming needs covered.

Austin

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml