Internet cafes are so yesterday. Yes, the future belongs to Linux cafes! Well, this is the case if you live in Toronto, anyway. Heck, they even rent ready to go notebooks. The only windows seen here are in the walls…

Linux users who live in Toronto now have a special place to gather, get online, and sip fancy coffee drinks. It’s not Starbucks, it’s the linuxcaffe.

In 2003, David Patrick was keeping an eye on his neighborhood corner store, just a few feet down the road from his home near the Christie subway station. “[It] was going to hell,” Patrick says. “It was filthy and the owner showed up only long enough to sell single smokes to the local kids.” He and his wife and nephew started dreaming about what a good location it would be for a café. “We started to talk about what we would do there — really good coffee, panini and soup, wireless Internet,” he says.

Patrick had spent more than 30 years in the entertainment industry in various jobs, mostly in or around movie studios. But that year, the film industry was “taking a beating” and he needed something else to do. “The more we talked, the more we liked, and as the film biz had all but ground to a halt, we had to consider alternatives,” he says. “After a few family meetings and number crunching, we went for it, and got it.” Source: Newsforge

[tags]linux,toronto,latte,neighborhood corner store,subway station[/tags]