some advice needed

[reynardza]

Hi guys,

I need some advice,

I’m in charge of an Internet Cafe with +- 10 pc. We have been plagued the last couple months with bandwidth chewing viruses, spy ware, system crashes. And I had enough, I spend half my day just struggling and fixing computers. The machines run anything from Win98 second edition to WinXP. This Microsoft game is getting really expensive, Microsoft Office Suites, Anti-Viruses licenses, etc.

This is what the pc's are used for.
Web Surfing,
Word, Excel, PowerPoint,
MSN, Skype, Yahoo, AOL
No Gaming.
Flash drive support,
Be able to connect up to my hp printers...

I was wondering if it would not be easier to just switch to Linux? The Linux fan boys claim, no spy ware, no viruses, a free Office Suite (something that can save/read in the word/excel format) and what not. What distro do you guys recommend? Something that is similar to windows to make it easier for our users,

File access between a Linux and a win98 – winxp pc’s possible?

Thanks guys,

reynard

 

[flarkit]

Suse and Ubuntu may be the popular choice for easy-use distro's, but do realise that switching from Windows will involve a steep learning curve. Are you willing to spend time teaching people the differences between the OS's and the Office packages?

File access between Linux and XP is allowed via Samba. A Win98 PC will be able to access shared folders on a Linux host, but not the other way round.

 

[jano]

Perhaps you should consider a mix of Windows and Linux machines? Then the Windows machines have MS Office (some people will still want Office), while the Linux ones have OpenOffice. You could offer a discount on the Linux machines, or put a premium on the Windows boxes...

 

[raZer]

I think your client base may not like the switch to linux as its a huge change from MS.
Why not block IE and install Firefox? That should stop 99% spyware and its not very different from IE

 

[reynardza]

Using firebox & bit defender atm, the idea is to convert one pc at a time. get the feel for it, 80% of our clients are coming for internet access, hopefully the Linux firebox interface is similar to the windows version, and there will always be windows machines if the clients do not like the switch, my only concert is the file access between the machines, and msn/yahoo im apps

 

[nayyares]

Hello,

First make SQUID server as your proxy server, using it you can block many spy, blaster, virus attack to your LAN for both Incomming and outgoing traffic.

second, make SAMBA as your windows machines domain controller, and make sure that your user login through their samba accounts, it will prevent them to install any unwanted stuff in client machines, you can possible control all sort of problem with these services.

cheers