Linux is a great operating system for networking. So how is it possible to not see Linux in Internet cafes and lan houses ??? There are no cyber cafe / lan house managers in Linux?
There are lan house / cyber cafe managers in Linux, and the (almost) massive presence of window$ is due more to ignorance of the general public, and the disordered (piracy) spread of window$ than anything else.
I will not address only one system for managing cyber cafe / lan house here, but four, which may serve to set up a cyber cafe / lan house with Linux.
LanBR
LanBr is a manager software that helps to control and manage of Lan Houses and Cyber Cafes powered by Linux, in order to ease the operations of daily life in an internet cafe/ lan house environment.
The system is constantly evolving and has many features to achieve a good management of Lan Houses or Cyber Cafes in Linux.
Currently LanBr is distributed in three distinct versions:
- LanBr Free: Totally Free Version manager to control and limited up to 16 stations simultaneously, one dedicated for immediate use of Linux on your lan house at no cost. The basic support is provided in a toll free session of the Creativa Club’s Portal. The features of Free LanBr are enough for basic control and management of a small internet cafe.
- LanBr Light: This version is available through a subscription plan (starting at R$ 19.90 monthly), being able to control up to 48 machines depending on the plan chosen. The LanBr Light offers excellent value for money and there are many other advantages through the Creativa Club’s Portal, as enhanced support, tutorials, tips and advice.
- LanBr EX : If you need a manager with extra features, more robust, capable of providing an excellent management and control of the establishment, there is also an expert supported version, custom tailored for the needs of the customer. It’s also a paid version.
Regardless of version, the manager LanBr, the client and server modules are constantly updated, ensuring better security and fix for problems in accordance with the feedback from users.
Created with Free Pascal and running under dosemu, LanBr is available in rpm (Mandriva, CentOS, Fedora) and deb (Debian and Ubuntu).
Site: http://www.portalcriativa.com.br/lanbr.php
To download the packages for each distribution, follow the installation instructions on the link http://www.portalcriativa.com.br/lanbr_manualserver.php
Open LanHouse
It is a project of Wilson Pinto Junior with help of volunteers and has as main objective to provide a complete and easy LAN Manager for Cyber Cafes and Lan Houses. The Program is all written in Python using Gtk and GNOME Human Guidelines “to an intuitive interface and ease to use”.
Features
- Price particular of machines or users
- Close applications after finish session
- Support the plugins
- Support the tickets
- Support the pre-paid mode
- Shutdown/Reboot remotely
- User management with credit control
- Machine management with time and price control
- Autodetect new machines into server
- History control
- Limited and non limited modes
- Allow logins from machine clients
- Suport Cash flow
- Suport Open debts
With packages for Debian (Ubuntu), and Arch Linux, dependencies are:
Core: (both client and server):
Client:
Server:
Site: http://trac.openlanhouse.org/
Cafe Con Leche
CCL (libccls + libcclc) is a library that intends to make the development of internet cafe programs easier, doing some of the work for you. libccls is used to make the server part, and libcclc is used to make the client. It is currently a work in progress, the APIs are subject to changes.
Features
- It handles the communication betwen client and server, so you don’t have to care about sockets, and things like that.
- Suport for secure connections using OpenSSL.
- Flexible tarifs system.
- Support for selling products, etc
- Support for members (they can have different tarifs)
- It controls the time of the client sessions, and calculates the price.
- Support for countdown sessions, session pausing, swaping sessions from one workstation to another, etc.
- Logging capabilities, and log searching.
Dependencies
- SQLite (3.0.x series since libccl 0.5.0, 2.8.x before that)
- glib (2.x series, tested with 2.4.x)
- FOX Toolkit
- CCLFox (Client program of the system)
It is developed on Linux, but it is supposed to work everywhere SQLite and Glib, and OpenSSL works. It was tested on Microsoft Windows (98 and XP) and on Linux.
Site: http://ccl.sourceforge.net/
Download: https://sourceforge.net/projects/mkahawa/
Cyborg
The system runs on a web interface, and control terminals via a multi-platform client, which can be used on Windows and Linux platforms.
Currently supported languages are:
- English (en) (interface and documentation)
- Spanish (es) (interface and documentation)
- Dutch (nl) (interface)
- Portuguese (pt) (interface)
- Brazilian portuguese (pt_BR) (interface and documentation)
- German (de) (interface)
- Greek (el) (interface)
Requirements
The requirements are: A SQL-compliant RDBMS (PostgreSQL is used by the development team and fully supported), a Perl-capable system (Linux is preferred) a HTTP CGI-capable server and some Perl modules (Template Toolkit and others…).
Hello,
Thanks for your post, it was a great help, I'm looking forward to opening a cyber cafe but I'm still trying to get enough data.
In case of future expansion, are there any management softwares that can allow users use the same tickets from other cyber cafes that you own?
Some cyber cafe managers allow to use tickets and to exchange machines with the same ticket, for example, you start your session on one machine, then, for some reason the machine stops working, you can use the rest of your time in other machine in the same LAN. For a WAN type of ticket, I am not sure it can be done yet. But, for a LAN, it works for sure.
Is it possible to use a linux server with windows clients?
see im planning to start an internet cafe next year but i really need a roburst OS that is secure.
Yes, it's possible to have Linux server and windows clients.
There are more options, like OpenASB http://www.openasb.org
Ok ?
Greetings