BEFORE IT'S DAWN in Bangalore, Adi Nugroho's cell phone starts ringing. It's usually an SOS call coming from his distant homeland of Makassar, in Indonesia. The other day, he got up particularly early. "We had a crisis," he said. "Our wireless mast crashed down on the police station."

But the crises, and having to repeatedly cope with trying situations, hardly wipes the broad smile off Adi's face, and the jokes he is wont to repeatedly share. In fact, Adi sees opportunity in adversity.

In September 1999, when Internet access speeds were crawling on his island-home at Makassar, a small town in Indonesia's Sulawesi, some 1400 kms from Jakarta, he came up with an unusual solution. He built Indonesia's first full-Linux internet cafe. It was called iNterNUX.

By now, he's no more in the cybercafe business. "Simple," says Adi, "because I don't want to compete with my customer." By now, most of the Internet cafes in Makassar use GNU/Linux for their servers. His own Internet cafe has grown into an Internet Server Provider -- see http://www.internux.net.id -- and continues to use GNU/Linux.

Crisis is the mother of invention. By 1999 he knew his job at a Siemens project was coming to an end. So he thought of starting the cybercafe to cater to the 1.5 million from Makassar.

Says Adi: "I opened the cybercafe. There were only five machines. All 486 machines. At that time, I really didn't want to use Windows anymore. In the corporate world, we had a lot of problems using Windows. More than half of our time we would spend just fixing computers. Even after working overtime. Fixing computers which hung, and fighting virii.'

Says he: "Sometimes if there is a virus, and no anti-virus for it yet, I would have to hack the virus, to make my own anti-virus solution while awaiting a better solution. It's real terrible; you can try it. (Laughs)"

By then, he was a home-user of GNU/Linux. The thought had struck him that if he ever had the option -- and was not constrained by corporate policy -- then he would surely switch over in the workplace too.

So, he did set up GNU/Linux on his 486 machines "because I didn't have money for everything (while setting up the cybercafe)". So he just bought a Pentium III as a server, and used what is now called the LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project, then called the x-terminal).

Makassar (also known as Macassar, Mangkasar) is the provincial capital of South Sulawesi, in Indonesia, on the island of Sulawesi. Beginning in the sixteenth century, Makassar was the dominant trading center of eastern Indonesia. Makassar was a key center for Malays working in the Spice Islands trade, as well as a valuable base for European and Arab traders from much further afield.

Soon, the results started to show.

Compared to another Internet cafe, his ol' faithful 486s could work faster than a PII machine. "Of course, because it was an x-terminal," says he, proudly. It was both low-cost and fast. This drew customers who didn't know what GNU/Linux was. They just used it, as Adi puts it with glee. At that time too, most people didn't know much about computers at all. So using one operating system or another was a non-issue. "They didn't say 'This is Linux and I don't want it', but instead they said, 'This is Linux, and I want to learn it'," Adi narrates.

Thanks to earlier generation PCs and apt software, Adi claims that break-even came in three months. "If someone says we cannot get money from Linux, then I say, I got a lot of money from Linux," he smiles.

In the year 2000, Internet cafes got very popular. They started growing very fast. Again Adi began "flowing like water", and thought that if a number of Internet cafes came up, he would lose customers. So, he just switched roles -- becoming an Internet cafe installer. "They can take my customer, but at least I can get the money first. Yeah, that's business," he says with his laugh very much in place.

Demand far outstripped supply, and it was then easy to earn because of the lack of GNU/Linux support skills. "If you install just Windows at that time, you could get paid about US$5 per computer. I can get three times of it by installing Linux. Because nobody knew Linux at that time. Its only about business," he adds.

By 2001, he expected the number of Internet installers to grow. "So we were looking for another problem we could solve. The problem with most Internet cafes in Makassar is that they would use only dial-up, and were costly," as Adi recounts.

So, he started an ISP (Internet Service Provider).

But there was a problem here because of the official monopoly. Laws laid down then that Internet access could be provided by PTIndosat, and they didn't want to sell bandwidth to someone like Adi. Says he: "Even if I want to sell dial-up access, dial-up phone lines is provided by PTTelecom and they don't want to sell telephone lines to me."

So, they started using wireless LAN. At thta time, it was still not regulated, because the government was none too wise about wifi and all that.

Adi shut his Internet cafe, because he didn't want to compete with his clients. What's his experience then, after running the country's first GNU/Linx-only cybercafe?

"Nice. Nobody complained that it was Linux. Everyone complained because I'm so poor that my Internet cafe didn't have even an airconditioner, and it's needed in Indonesia," he laughs, talking about an experiment that ran for 18 months.

Would he recommend it?

Yes, he says emphatically. "We experienced very less problems. Anyhow it's not a barrier to user. Just make your Linux very similar to Windows and nobody knows the difference (if you fear customer resistance). Qvwm is very much like Windows 95. Only an experienced user would know the difference. Just change the icon. Ha, ha, ha, ha..."

On the other hand, some customers preferred his IRC clinet -- because kvirc is better than the Windows-based mirc.

Adi thinks it a bit of an irony that the giant state-run firms are now offering wireless LAN for Internet access. "But when customers go there, they tell the customers, 'We have wireless access, just like iNterNUX (Adi's firm)."

His word of advice to Free/Libre and Open Source Software enthusiasts: "My suggestion is don't become a follower. Be a leader."