[Glastonbury] an idea develops?

[Sean Miller]

Martin WHEELER wrote:

>To my knowledge, there is *no* cyber-cafe anywhere at all in the UK
>dependent *solely* on GNU/Linux systems.  (Waverley Station in
>Edinburgh comes closest.)  Everyone falls at the last hurdle, with lame
>excuses like: "Well, we've got to cater for those who can only use
>Windows, you know".
>
This is an interesting point... for two years (2000/2001) the UKOUG (UK 
Oracle User Group) Conference in Birmingham had internet access via Sun 
Sparcstations using Netscape in some terribly high screen resolution 
with absolutely minimal fonts installed... the connection was clearly 
inadequate and you could hear the delegates screaming "Give me Windows!! 
Give me Windows!!! ARRGHHH"....

...this was a very poor advert for Unix, and Sun should really have been 
pretty ashamed of themselves. Today one can present a browser to a user 
in Linux that is indistinguishable from one in Windows.... in fact, I 
have offered friends Mozilla in SuSE and they have really not noticed 
the difference.... the keys they are used to are all present, and even 
the "plug-ins" that they have come to rely upon (perhaps with the 
exception of "Windows Media Player" -- yuk!) are all there.

Now, before Martin starts hyper-ventilating, as I am sure he will, at my 
implicit approval of Micro$oft presentation I am going to say that I 
believe we have to "get real"... we are living in a world where 90% of 
the browser market is now dominated by Micro$oft... 90%!! This is a 
terrible state of affairs to have got into, but it is true... slowly 
over the last few years the Netscape market share has disappeared and 
with the news a couple of weeks ago that AOL/Time Warner have now 
effectively scrapped the brand altogether and laid off their NS staff we 
are in a position where it is left to Mozilla and Opera to fly the flag 
for non-M$ browsers.  When you are selling a product to customers then 
if you are wishing to survive you have to give them what they want... if 
your cybercafé presents a "cyber-experience" that they are not expecting 
there is a good chance that they will go elsewhere... with Mozilla 1.4 I 
believe that we finally have a "cyber-experience" that will be familiar 
to them, and I would expect that over the next year or so we will see 
more penetration of Linux into the cybercafé marketplace.

>But this is a business venture; not a user-group project.
>Franchising an international chain of Linux Coffee Houses (with
>attendant services) is way beyond the remit of LUGoG.
>  
>
 From small acorns... ;-)

Sean