which distro is suitable for internet cafe?
can anybody recommend it to me?

To use when you visit an Internet cafe, or to be the server/access point in the cafe?

Any distro with wireless will be fine if your a patron visiting. If they don't have dhcp setup (they would be smart not to), then you'll have to set the IP/gateway manually, but that is totally doable.

If you are asking for the server/access point option, I could say the same, but I'd rather know more about what would be running on the server.

I *THINK* the original poster is looking to set up an internet cafe with PCs for users. I would encourage the use of an easy to maintain distro that supports all the software you want to use on the clients, and can be locked down well. I would personally push for Gentoo, but most 'Desktop' distributions are perfectly suitable. If all the PCs have the same hardware, you can just clone one system with Gentoo after each update. I would AVOID Debian due to its (seeming) lack of updates.

I would suggest that Knoppix would be a good system to use, it can be configured for internet cafes and if a customer tries to be clever and hack the machine, you just reboot and return the pc to it's pristine state.

Of course, doing that requires a Knoppix remaster. Similar results could be achieved by mounting root via NFS read only, and then using copy-on-write to a temporary scratch disk.

to be the client...

ubuntu is a good choice?

Ubuntu (gnome based) is very good for newbie linux users. I've suggested it to people who were running '95 or '98 and they haven't had a problem. If you like KDE, there is Kubuntu.

If you use a KDE based distro, there is a kiosk tool that enables you to lockdown certain aspects of the sytem or desktop so users can't change them.

I would think KDE might be slightly better for an internet cafe as it generally looks a bit more like MS Windows. While we may not always appreciate that, customers probably will.

Most distros will be OK.

If you want simple internet access using Firefox, via an ethernet connection, then you may need to think one way for the terminals and another for the server.

Most free distros will run your terminals, but you may need to ensure the presence of Apache for the server.

What I will say is that I am impressed with PCLinuxOS as a home user, and on their site, (www.pclinuxonline.com) there is some stuff about adding a program called "mklivecd" and creating an installable live distro based exactly on the programs you want on the computer. This could be used to repair any hacks. The standard as is version should cover the terminals, you can add apache/samba/network stuff for the server, delete a few unneeded stuff and fashion another live cd in case of emergencies on that.

It's beyond my knowledge to set up, but any distro should work provided it has the right software included.

I know a guy in Israel who just finished a big internet cafe project and he used Slackware 10.0 on all of the machines... running KDE...

since these things are used for mostly web browsing stuff, if you don't do an update after every single one, you should still be okay.. just do a cluster of updates every couple months or something... Slackware is stable enough that it should work fine for you.. and you can always use swaret to do the updating automatically, but MAKE SURE YOU READ THE CHANGELOG FIRST!!!

I wud say knoppix if u want a linux os and winxp for a windows os, coz some kewl features available in both os afaik.