A Babe in Tuxland

Joe Barr writes "This is the kind of story that WagEd and MS would love to see in one of their astroturf campaigns. But this story is real grassroots, with a real Sysadmin writing it and a real granddaughter as the babe using Linux. A sweet tale, with tips on Linux for kids." Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.

Comments

I've set up a GNU/Linux machine for my kids too

[darthcamaro]

Like everyone else I've got alot of old hardware that Windoze won't run on - but you can run Open Office, Mozilla on top of KDE/GNOME on a Pentium I and it'll work for kids quite well. No need to upgrade and shell out additional cash. And hey KDE Games are GREAT for kids..and they're free!!!

Re:I've set up a GNU/Linux machine for my kids too

[Mantorp]

A number of the kids' games I've loaded on my XP machine won't run properly unless logged in as admin.

Re:I've set up a GNU/Linux machine for my kids too

[Anonymous Coward]

My 8-year-old is a Linux zealot. He's got a login on both of my Linux boxes and is constantly asking to get "on his desktop" so he can play games, surf, and tweak the UI settings. He also constantly bitches about having to use his mom's computer (an XP machine) in daily use because it doesn't have cool games, etc.

Re:I've set up a GNU/Linux machine for my kids too

[B3ryllium]

"DeepFreeze" is a cool tool for stability; just get the system in working order, and then freeze it. Every time you turn it on, it will be as though nothing happened the last time you used it. Hard drive will be exactly as it was the day you froze it.

It's awesome for public access terminals. Eliminates the need to reformat/reinstall, and virtually eliminates viral infections as well (because if infected, a simple reboot is all the cure needed).

Kids can do it...

[lukewarmfusion]

"My four-year-old granddaughter, K.D., hasn't had any trouble figuring it out, and if she can do it, you can too."

User Intelligence:
Boss with MBA 4-year-old girl

Seriously, though - kids learn at some incredible rates. They pick up language, new skills, etc. so much faster than adults. We often have to fight through a lifetime of doing something one way in order to do it a "better" or just plain newer way.

BTW, the article is chock full of acronym hell if you're not pretty familiar with Linux (not so worried about the /. community).

What about seniors?

[BillFarber]

I'd be more impressed by a 90-year old figuring out how to use Linux.

It's sort of funny....

[budhaboy]

reading other's comments that dis the author for merely dumbing KDE down to a kiosk... I presume those folks don't have kids. My son LONGS for the day he can 'use' a computer. He struggles with lack of freedom he sees in having to ask for help in using the computer (when his parents do not).

It's important to allow toddlers the illusion of freedom, it helps reenforce the idea that curiosity can lead to great things.

This highlights something..

[adamgreenfield]

I've thought to be true for quite some time. Linux really shines in its ability to customize the user's experience to fit the user's needs. This is a strongpoint that really lends itself to application in Elementary and Pre-Elementary learning enviroments.

This article also highlights a good example of postive computer interacion where the childs family took and interest in their computer activites and really made the whole thing a good experience. Interesting reading.

My three year old could do ktuberling

[mainframemouse]

Emily, my three year old could do the Mr Potato head game. What I found curious is the machine is dual boot and she knew which OS had the game. I'm glad other posters have mentioned using X is childsplay not linux. I've still not got full functionality from my radeon 9200 under linux. That said, I'd rather let Emily run amok in linux than window.

Kids are Smart

[RAMMS EIN]

I think this story nicely illustrates how smart children can be. I have a brother who just turned six, and has seen Windows installs so often he can do it (at least he instructed me last time when I did it). That said, he insists on Linux these days "because it has better games". By these, he means rafkill, xonix, and sopwith. For sopwith, he even figured the controls (which are about the most horrible ever - especially on a Dvorak keyboard) in a few minutes.

I'm gonna give the kid a book about programming and see how long it takes before he writes some revolutionary app that only he could think of...

KDE, Mozilla Firefox, TuxPaint, TuxRacer ...

[daveewart]

My daughter is almost 3 and has been using her own KDE session on my Debian box for the past few months. I set up a username for her, so that I could log her in and know that she couldn't mess up anything I cared about.

We were gobsmacked when we realised that she had figured out how to type her username and password, though. She was *so* pleased with herself when she got that sussed out.

On her desktop, she has Mozilla Firefox set to go to BBC CBeebies - appropriate content for pre-school and you can't 'escape' the site, since all links are internal. She also enjoys using TuxPaint to draw pictures for us.

I'm hoping she's going to do a spot of Toddler Linux Advocacy at the local playgroups soon ...

Re:Should have mentioned "parental controls"

[Red Alastor]

What is the point of parental control ? Can't we just educate kids. It's not like seeing a nude body will traumatize them for life.

I'm not surprised

[jht]

My not-quite 2-year-old son has been "using" an old iMac for a few months now. He used to watch my wife and I on our computers, and would scoot up to take the mouse from us and try clicking things. So I took a 4-year-old iMac we had around, set it up minimally, and installed a few kids' programs (Jumpstart Preschool, Finding Nemo, and a couple of others), and set it up so he could just wake it up, grab one of the programs in the Dock, and go to town with it.

He mastered it very quickly. Now he calls it his "Mac-y", and asks to use it almost daily. We let him have a half-hour or so at a time, and he's picked up a decent amount of skill very quickly. He likes doing letter drills the most.

Funny anecdote: one of the first times we let him use it, he was having a little trouble pointing the mouse properly. I went to help him position it, and he pushed my hand away and said "No!". After a minute, he figured it out himself. Now I help him with very little and don't volunteer it - I wait for him to ask.

And a pet peeve: Why do all kids' programs require the CD to be present? Don't you know we can't trust a toddler with a CD? I have to make .DMG files out of each one, and have them automount at startup so he can use all his programs.

Re:Mission

[Magada]

Ah. Well. Allow me to dissent, please. The breaking point for Windows is also hardware support. It's just that not many vendors are crazy enough to issue new hardware w/out also providing Windows drivers. The essential word here is "new". Did you ever try to install some "legacy" hardware in a WinXP box? Methinks the Mac people have gotten that part right, while also achieving total customer lock-in. IBM does same with their "big iron" products.

You're a Troll

[soloport]

So why am I headded over to my friend's house (a VP of Marketing -- no dumbass) this morning to help him get his printer to work on Windows?

I help CPAs, Morgage Brokers, etc., every single day with the same crap people say makes Linux "hard".

Look, computers are hard. Can't people see the forest for the religeous trees?! When you get used to one environment, anything else looks "foreing". That makes it real convenient to say "that... that... thing! It made me work at figuring this... this... thing I don't even have to think about in my world."

You are just adding more religeon to the noise. Windows is much harder to learn -- in many respects -- as is Linux. You just don't run into many folks (yet) who've had to go the other direction: Linux to Windows.

I've been using Unix for twenty years. Last environment used (before switching to Linux) was Solaris. Let me tell you, young whipper snapper, when I had my first try at Windows (1998). I about had a nervous breakdown.

I still don't like Windows XP verry well. It just doesn't feel right. Everything is so fucking hard to get done in that stupid practically-windows-only environment, with a command prompt that won't auto-complete! Why is it 2004 and DOS won't auto-complete?! Morons.

You're missing the very fact that in many, many cases, when "things don't always work right" you can't even get them back to working whatsoever -- as you watch Windows eat itself alive and laugh at you while it makes you play "pin the tail on the problem". It blindfolds you!

Some people have paid me thousands to fix their Windows problems. Simple stuff, like getting printers to work or their Outlook to quit behaving "weird". Thousands, because they keep asking me to come back to do more -- install this software, fix this little glitch, remove this spyware my daughter installd ("my computer's slow"). Translation? "It's too hard for me to do it". In my opinion, it is Windows which isn't quite baked enough and ready for anyones' desktop.

You want "easy"? Then everyone should be using a PDA or maybe a Mac.

Re:You're a Troll

[naelurec]

I think the simple answer is "under the hood" Windows is significantly more complex and difficult than Linux. When the gooey goodness on Windows breaks, it tends to be very difficult to get it fixed.

I do lots of admin -- I found lately I have been on an upswing fixing Windows boxes and realized that so many times the "solution" is a reinstall. Yikes.

Within the last 48 hours, I have two instances where a full system reinstall is the "solution" -- someone was troubleshooting an email issue on w2k and a OEM tech support person (wireless card) said to reinstall drivers several times. Eventually this broke something in winsock which caused ALL network functionaility to break.

After googling and talking to other techs, I came to the conclusion the only way to fix this problem properly was to reinstall all of Windows. Of course, since his network access was severed, backup was done to floppy disks (it was an older laptop) -- yikes. For an issue that wasn't even initially a problem with Windows cost this particular individual 2 days of productivity getting his system back in order.

Another system (WinXP Home) when booted up one morning simply reboots over and over again. The safe mode doesn't even work -- hangs on "mup.sys". Blech. No rhyme or reason why this stopped working, no one really seems to know WHY this occurs and so far, seems like the "fix" is a reinstall. Great.

Of course, this was only the two recent issues. But even things like spyware infections have required me to reinstall the entire system and spend hours reinstalling programs, downloading security updates, reconfiguring, etc.

Needless to say, from an administrative point of view, while *nix definitely felt like a lot larger learning curve, I have found that it makes more sense and is a lot more logical. Infact, I'd much rather admin a *nix box when issues happen than a Windows box (even though I did get a MCSE and have been using Windows for 14 years) because quite frankly, it is possible to troubleshoot whereas Windows-- blech.

Re:You're a Troll

[B'Trey]

I strongly suspect that you're a troll but I'll take a few moments to reply for the benefit of those that may take you seriously.

First, I'm not a zealot. Computers are tools. They aren't spouses or lifemates or religions. They're just tools that do a job. I use Linux for two reasons. One - it's cheap. I run a web server, a mail server, a couple of mailing lists, a DNS server, etc. on my home network (seven machines.) I simply can't afford to purchase Windows server software to do all that. (Well, I guess I could afford it - I make a decent living. But I simply refuse to lay out that kind of cash for what I'm trying to do.) Two - it's powerful. It drives me batty that Windows doesn't have decent scripting and command line tools. Some of that is correctable (Cygnus, Perl, etc) but some of it is not (the lack of links on the file system.) And some of the stuff that is technically correctable can't be done because I can only install approved apps on the server. (I work as a system administrator for a government system.) I've been working in both Windows and Unix environments for a long time.

You're right that there are people who have no business sitting down at a computer. They simply don't grok them, and no amount of training seems to get through to them. For those people, it doesn't matter if it's Linux or Windows or OSX. It's hard.

You (and other posters to this sub-thread) are also right that Windows has hard problems too. But I run a network of seven computers at home, four of which are Linux boxes and four of which are Windows boxes. (My laptop dual-boots, for those who noted that those numbers don't add up.) At work, I have two independent networks - one is unclassified and one is classified. There are about 60 machines on each network, all of them Windows. I spend more time on Google researching problems on those four Linux machines than I do researching problems for over 120 Windows machines.

That isn't a scientific study. It's my personal experience.

But to me, the key thing is that when I have no clue how to accomplish something on Windows, I can usually start poking around the menus and options and figure it out without having to hit Google. With Linux, I sometimes have no idea where to even start, and I'm not a Linux newbie.

One quick case in point. I was about ready to pull my hair out last weekend. I moved a hard drive from hdb to hda last weekend. Before moving it, I was mounting hdb as the root of my fs, with LILO installed on the mbr of hda. I configured lilo.conf, and did a chrooted lilo, shutdown and moved the hard drive. My system went scizophrenic. It claimed it was mounted hdb as a ReiserFS system when it was actually mounting hda as ext3. You Linux gurus probably already know what I did - or rather, didn't do. I didn't update my fstab when I moved the hard drive.

I'm sure that there are a number of horror stories people can post about things they did or problems they've had with Windows too. I've got a few myself. But things like this consistently pop up to bite you in the ass with Linux, and all too often you don't even know what to Google on to find the answer. (I never was able to solve this problem on Google. A newsgroup post get the answer for me a couple of days later.) They happen in Windows too, but not near as often. In many ways, the additional complexity of Linux that causes problems is the very reason for that additional power I was praising just a few paragraphs up. I'm very aware of that. I'm not knocking Linux or praising Windows. I'm simply saying that, in my experience, Windows is much easier to administer than is a Linux box.

Re:Linux is not hard to use if setup specifically

[elmegil]

You obviously don't use Windows much. 99% of the time I can get a windows driver installed and working right the first (or maybe second) time. Especially if I ignored included CDs and go download directly from the manufacturer.

Ever try to get wireless working on your linux machine? Using PCMCIA on a laptop? Go try that with anything that you just bought off the shelf because it was cheap and tell me how the Linux vs Windows installation is. And I'm not even talking about the driver itself, I'm talking about which #@$! file gets updated (and don't start with "use the gui then" because the gui didn't even recognize the card) and what it needs in it to work.

And another thing...

[soloport]

My family uses Linux -- and only Linux. Not because I'm a Linux zealot. They use it because it's what they know. It's what they know because it was the only environment their dad could put together that would not require him to become a full-time system administrator, at home.

We have six kids (now age 9 - 19). Thus we've always had many computers around -- the kids spend equal amounts of time with PS2, TV and PC.

We've tried Windows many, many times. We always go back to "easy" Linux. It just runs; We all know it; It offers us all the games we need; Got tired of hearing "IE sucks", "Outlook sucks", "Office sucks", etc., etc.

Had I been able to make more of a living, sooner in life, half of them may have had Macs, by now. The others would probably still be happier with Linux.

Again, it isn't about Linux, Windows or Mac. It's about what is most familiar.

As a learning device

[digidave]

I've found that my three year old son has learned spelling, phonics, fine motor control and problem solving at a far greater pace than his same-age cousin due to using a computer.

I bought my son a used computer when he was two as a present for potty training. He generally runs Windows because of all the educational games, but does use my Linux computer for some games.

My best tip is that your kid should learn to login themselves... it's a great way for them to learn to spell words. Change up the password every week or so and tell them which word it is. My kid learns to spell five or six letter words in a day or two.

Anyway, despite possible problems with creating a computer nerd with no social life, I think two and three year olds should always have a computer available to them. Just limit the time they spend on it.

Uh...no

[Anonymous Coward]

If some Windows company owned a news site that was always posting anti-Linux stuff, people would be up in arms ...

I got news for you. Microsoft has cheerleading news sites all over the place, not to mention astroturfers who post to them (much like you). As someone else already mentioned, MS comes under greater scrutinity precisely because they are in a position of enormous power and have been proven in a court of law to have abused that power. So I would say that no, there isn't a double standard here. Or are you going to now say that OSDN has as much money and market cap (and, by extension, power) as Microsoft?

Didn't think so.

Re:Linux is not hard to use if setup specifically

[elmegil]

Oh yes, stating simple facts makes me a troll. I know a lot of people much smarter than I who have had the same types of problems with wireless cards--but all just different enough to not be able to help each other. Gotta love the slashbots.

Re:Because what can you do with Linux?

[hogger]

It's all relative to your skill level and available dollars I suppose.

What you did, from your perspective, might seem cut and dry and inexpensive to you. You built the PC yourself. It's safe to say that some would say it's bizarro to expect the user to build their own PC. Some would say it's bizarro to expect the user to fork over all the money for WinXP when open-source alternatives are available.

From my perspective installing mythtv or freevo on a debian box requires no more effort than installing XP, rebooting, visiting windowsupdate, rebooting, visiting windowsupdate, rebooting, installing ATIs software, rebooting, updating ATIs software, etc... I can have a mythtv box setup from absolute scratch (box of parts from newegg.com) in less than 5 hours.

I too have a multimedia PC in my livingroom. It's based on linux. It took very little time to get up and running. It can:

• rip dvd, encode to divx
• play divx
• pause live TV (mythtv)
• host recorded TV files (mpeg) for any PC in the house
• play games (mostly UT2004)
• play mp3s

I'm sorry but a house full of kids with all Linux *is* bizarro world because it's not normal.

I'll agree that a house full of kids using Linux isn't normal. If normal is what you're shooting for then feel free to point your gun at the ground and shoot. I'm sure you'll hit your target.

All of their friends use Windows

Yes, most of their friends use Windows. Most of their friends are normal. Most of their friends' parents drive SUVs. We don't have an SUV. Should I go buy an SUV?

all the good games come out for Windows

We play a lot of Unreal Tournament 2004 at hour house. Is it not a good enough game for you?

and all the good professionally written, professionally packaged, and easily installed software is written for Windows

I've run out of patience on this one. You're clearly clueless.