hello, following are my observations. note that most of them are on my personalexperiences and observations. 1. except gaming and may be corel, I don't think there is any need formicrosoft windows. I want to know what gnulinux can't do? 1. I can not only have an application similar to ms office but also can create .doc and xls files (although not recommended ) in open office. I don't find any interface changes in that, and if miner ones are there, cafe owners can be trained for that. 2. gimp and inkscape (great for corel users) might have a steep learning curve for those who are not into graphics designing. but for those who know photoshop in particular, can use gimp with no "STEEP LEARNING CURVE". this is my study because I have been involved with an organisation which takes workshops every week end and they have managed to teach gimp to photoshop users in just 2 day, I repeat just 2 DAYS! for me gimp will be absolutely greek and latin because I am not into graphics nither do I know photoshop. same is the case with inkscape. we have an expert on gimp and inkscape on this list in the form of shradha,so I leave it to shradha to answer this comment. 3. gaim works with yahoo very well and as far as voice chatting is concerned then skipe is better and even popular. and more and more people need to acccess orkut these days so again the tide is not m$ specific.
4. mp3 and movies dont seam to be a problem once xmms and related things are installed. and let ubuntu media center and fisty come out. 5. there are three problems that cyber cafes want to get rid of. "virus, virus and virus!" 6. Stability is the most important issue when one wants huge business as far as cafes are concerned. we need uptime dude! so gnulinux is not just serving as an alternative but also as a "better alternative". yes, games is an issue and I believe that there should be a couple or 3 windows boxes with a huge notice board "warning, this computer is completely unsafe and your data is at risk. we will not be responsible if your data catches virus or is currupt!". then users will be aware that some machines dont carry this notice and some machines do. it is obvious that no one can take risk on this and if they do they will realise some day or later. and in front of every linux machine just put a notice "this is free software and gnulinux is completely virus free. we are aware that these machines perform better than windows ". the word "aware " is very important here. we are not giveing any vorenty about it because there could be hardware problems which are then pointed towards linux. so I think we must work on these points when we meet the cyber cafe owners. regards. Krishnakant.