A cyber café for thirty quid? Farcical or feasible?
“10 pc Cybercafé for 30ukp!!!!” was the triumphant claim of a recent post on the Puppy Linux users forum…
Thirty pounds sterling is about fifty US dollars – not a lot of money. Needless to say my colleagues and I were intrigued and perhaps even a tad sceptical. More intriguing was the claim that the five-year-old computers used to create this cybercafé prompted users to: “remark on how fast they are compared to their computers at home.”
Too good to be true?
So we contacted Robert Simpson, author of the post and director of Lincolnshire-based IT firm Ecomoney. Robert responded, “Come and see for your self.”
A few weeks later Susannah Dora Majlati (Angel in the DEOSS forum) and I drove to Scunthorpe to meet Robert and his partner Victoria Miller at the cybercafé. This is set up in the Riddings Drop In Centre, a local community centre about 2km from the centre of Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire.
Old dogs and new tricks
At first glance, the PC’s look like a batch of 2001-vintage PC’s running Microsoft Windows XP, complete with the ubiquitous “Bliss” Teletubbies-style wallpaper, loathed the world over by XP users. But closer inspection reveals a little penguin on the “Start” button.
This was because what we were looking at was not Micro$oft Windows at all. It was Linux. But this was not any old Linux. This was Puppy, a modern, Debian-derived Linux, designed specifically to run well on minimal hardware. And Robert has quite intentionally configured these machines to resemble XP. He explained, “Most of our users have no computer knowledge, Linux can sound frightening. Most people using our machines don’t even realise they are not running ’doze.”
Robert’s cybercafé comprises of ten PC’s with a mere 128 MB RAM and relatively pedestrian 700 – 800 MHz processors. Yet these elderly boxes motor along at a breathtaking speed.
Bad dog
Drop-in centre users range in age from under seven to over seventy. Assembling enough commercial Windows-based software to keep such a wide range of folks amused would be prohibitively expensive. You would need to buy ten licences for each piece of software you chose. And you would need to buy ten MS Windows licences too – as if Mr Gates isn’t rich enough already! And that assumes one could still buy a version of M$ Windows, sufficiently old to run on such elderly hardware in the first place e.g. Windows 98. Of course Windows 98 is now entirely unsupported.
Good puppy
Unlike Windows 98, Puppy is a modern operating system designed to run on low specification kit that is supported by a vibrant users group. Again, unlike any version of Windows, where everything costs extra, Puppy gives you almost all the software you need for a project like Roberts’s ready to work ‘out of the box. It includes a secure web browser, email client, word processor and spreadsheet. And there are countless more free applications just a download away. And there are several versions of Puppy that can be easily multi-booted from the same machines. One such release is Edupuppy. This is designed especially for kids and certainly seems to get the thumbs up from the younger users at Riddings Drop In Centre.
And good for the planet
The machines used to belong to a local school. When it decided to buy new computers it needed to dispose of the old ones. Nowadays one can’t just chuck old computers in a skip and forget about them. They have to be disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner. And this is not cheap, roughly £1000 ($1700 US) in this case. Needless to say the school was delighted for Robert and his chums to dispose of them for nothing!
Add that to the fact that puppy and all the software that comes bundled with it is open source and free of charge too. Apparently the £30 was actually spent on a router and some cartridges for an elderly printer.
Hidden costs?
Yes, there was one – time. Riddings is Robert’s first Puppy-based cybercafé. He admits it took him around two weeks actually setting it all up. He hastens to add that setting up the cybercafé put him on a steep learning curve. He argues that he would be much quicker second time around – perhaps a day or two.
Running dogs
Since setting up the cybercafé, Robert has created a complete working Puppy in a single file that can be squirted across a network. Using this technique, one well known to puppy experts, Robert demonstrated how Puppy could be fully configured, complete with all application software an elderly Compaq laptop in less than half an hour. Ironically, this is roughly what it took me to do a simple update on one of my much newer Windows XP boxes when I returned to sunny Southampton. Ho hum…
Conclusion
Aside from Robert’s infectious enthusiasm which left my head spinning as I drove back south, this trip really opened my eyes to the possibilities of Windows-free computing. Consequently, I now have three pre-2000 PC’s, including my one-time pride and joy, a 1998-vintage Hong Kong-purchased Palmax 1000, all happily running Puppy Linux and all behaving as if they were brand new machines.