Christmas Linux Experiment

[bartos]

I want to try linux with 5 and 8 year old children.
Their computer will be replaced by a P3 with linux on it.They have a P3 with XP on it. Just wondering what distro has someone tried or would like to recommend that children have picked up on.
There parents haven't seen linux before either. Maybe Edubuntu to start or a distro made to look like XP.
Any comments or suggestions welcome.:KS

[p_quarles]

You didn't say how much memory the computer will have, but since it's a P3 I'm guessing it's not going to be a huge amount. Honestly, I would use the OEM option on the Ubuntu alternative installation disk, and do something like this:
A lightweight windowing manager (probably Xfce or Fluxbox)
The educational programs from Edubuntu
A few child-appropriate games (e.g., Gnometris)
Some desktop icons for ease of use

I kind of doubt they will care if it doesn't look like XP, but it's probably a good idea to have an interface that is intuitive to people who are used to XP.

[floke]

I think Yellow Dog was designed for the PS3

...but dude, xmas is for the kids, not your own experiments - let them enjoy things for a while...

[-grubby]

I think Yellow Dog was designed for the PS3

...but dude, xmas is for the kids, not your own experiments - let them enjoy things for a while...

he said a pentium III

[bartos]

Sorry P3 -733 with 780 mb ram.

Learning new things is always fun for kids and this will be before christmas and their real presents.

[lyndaj70]

I have used several versions of Linux with my kids over the last 10 years...

SuSe, Debian, Damn Small and Ubuntu were their favorites, mainly because of all the games and apps that came with them or you could install.

Currently I have Ubuntu and load it up with Debian Jr. games. There are all types of apps from teaching basic spelling to typing to programming, for all ages.

I am downloading Edubuntu on this one for when my youngest logs in, but she's perfectly happy with lots of games in plain Ubuntu.

Overall, my kids prefer Linux over Windows, because there are more apps available, I have multiple computers with various operating systems around here, and they tend to gravitate to the Linux boxes. My oldest (16) for a time preferred WinXP but even then she would search out open-source programs that were cross-platform (like GIMP) to use on her installation. I prefer the Debian flavors (primarily Ubuntu) because of the ease of installing new apps via Synaptic, and while my kids have crashed MULTIPLE Windows installations, they have yet to damage a single Linux installation, in all these years,

They haven't really expressed a preference in either Gnome or KDE, they just use whichever I have predominate, though my oldest liked to experiment with the different window managers.

Curious to see how your "experiment" turns out, so I hope you keep us posted!
Take care!
:guitar:

[floke]

he said a pentium III

My bad! Sorry. (lol @ myself...)


Sorry P3 -733 with 780 mb ram.

Learning new things is always fun for kids and this will be before christmas and their real presents.

My 4(+1/2) year old has an old Tecra 8200 with Ubuntu on it with the Enlightenment desktop. He loves it for Frozen Bubble and Gnome Breakout - although he also has loads of other games on it - eg Wormux, Pingus etc. He also has the educational packages on it too - you don't need edubuntu to download the stuff you want - just set it up in a way they'll like - my son had a Yoda wallpaper but now likes the E17 default - he thinks he's so 1337 since myself and his mum use gnome, which is far too slow.

Heaven knows what they'll make of his Linux upbringing at school!

[thx11381974]

I've run Kubuntu on a PII 400 with 384mb of ram. It wasn't the quickest thing in the world, but it worked ok .

[Cochise]

you could try gOS the walmart pc os, nice an dsimple interface and add some games and education programs

[gn2]

I would suggest trying Linux Mint XFCE Community Edition: http://tinyurl.com/2lsz4w

Or Sam Linux: http://sam.hipsurfer.com/news.php

[Spike-X]

My son is nearly 7. When he's here he uses Ubuntu no problem.

He loves using TuxPaint.

[Insightfill]

The processor and RAM seem OK for most basic tasks, but find out what their "favorite things to do" are, including favorite web sites, and try those sites out using a "Desktop" copy of Ubuntu or Xubuntu. In particular, I know that a LOT of those Flash sites use up all of the processor that you can throw at it, making them unplayable on a slower machine. In particular, PBSKids and Youtube would be my first two visits

If possible, try to find out how things look on a faster computer compared to a slower one. On the families Dual G5 computer, the characters in Club Penguin bounce from square to square, but they slide on my Pentium 1GHz.

Adblock and Flashblock with give back some of the CPU.

[Kevsta100]

I want to try linux with 5 and 8 year old children.
Their computer will be replaced by a P3 with linux on it.They have a P3 with XP on it. Just wondering what distro has someone tried or would like to recommend that children have picked up on.
There parents haven't seen linux before either. Maybe Edubuntu to start or a distro made to look like XP.
Any comments or suggestions welcome.:KS

HA HA if their experience with Linux is anything like the one I'm having atm you'll be had for child cruelty!!!

:lolflag:

[fuscia]

most of my neighbors' kids, of similar age, play online games (the kids next door do so using firefox) so, i think it's very doable.

i'd suggest xfce as opposed to something like fluxbox. with xfce, you can easily have desktop icons, an xp-like menu, etc.


Learning new things is always fun for kids

that might be true on your home planet, but i think it's a bit of a stretch, to say the least, here.

[jviscosi]

The kids in my wife's classroom (4th & 5th grade) love some of the Linux educational games like Tutorshooter, Anagrammarama, KHangMan, etc. I would think you could find a number of other games (educational or not) in the repositories that they would enjoy. The computers are old donated P-III laptops with 128MB of memory at best. In the classroom they're using Fluxbox with the configuration locked down. (Keeps the kids from getting in trouble by deleting taskbars or icons or installing screensavers that say "Johnny is a poophead" or whatever. I'm pretty sure you can do something similar with XFCE or KDE using "kiosk mode" but in Flux I just did it by making the .fluxbox directory read-only to the student user.) I put icons for the frequently-used apps in an fbpanel, other apps in the right-click context menu.

[bartos]

Thanks for your responses

Just loading in a couple of Distros to find the one the system likes the most.

Keep everyone up to date as progress goes..

[Bartender]

I've got a PIII 1 GHz/512 RAM that runs Ububtu 7.10 pretty nicely. Your processor is a little slower but you've got more RAM. Xfce isn't as convenient as GNOME, but if you can get past that I'd guess that you would find Xubuntu very responsive.

[desertboy]

Personally I would boot up the minimal gentoo CD give them a copy of the install manual and come back next May, but I hate Xmas and not to keen on kids either.

[fuscia]

Personally I would boot up the minimal gentoo CD give them a copy of the install manual and come back next May, but I hate Xmas and not to keen on kids either.

[johnny]that's funny stuff.[/carson]

[lyceum]

Yellow Dog is $50 and was made for the PS3. I have heard that some stores sell Yellow Dog in the same isle as the PS3.

For Ubuntu try this:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=316047

Also, my daughter is going on 3. She only uses Edubuntu and my wife's Mac.