I don't know if this helps in the discussion -
It is helpful to target the wine layer in the mid-term for moving the most commonly used applications to linux.
Wine is closer to the 1.0 release :D and supports a host of default windows libs required for different applications.
So here's a proposed approach to move the cybercafe owners to Linux
1. Move their servers first. 2. Check which applications need to be moved on priority to Linux. 3. Help wine with bug-reports on getting the said application on wine. They work on features purely on _demand._ 4. Move small number of PCs as game pcs .. non-gaming pcs 5. Check which games are required to run on the machines. 6. Compare with Cedega ( wine commercial ) if it supported. 7. Buy Cedega if most of the games are supported. Its probably 2k or 3k for full support at max. 8. Check with Crossover office if they are willing to make yahoo messenger, msn messenger to work under linux. More the number of ppl who request for a 9. If yes buy Crossover office ( 40 $ ) and then get your favorite app to work in wine. The wine developers can get the apps working really really fast if you pay them to.
I seriously feel Wine is a really good intermediate solution to the problem of moving client desktops to Linux.
On the additional bonus side most apps / games run faster under Linux on wine :D
regards, C