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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.
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!!!
"My four-year-old granddaughter, K.D., hasn't had any trouble figuring it out, and if she can do it, you can too."
/. community).
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
I'd be more impressed by a 90-year old figuring out how to use Linux.
It's important to allow toddlers the illusion of freedom, it helps reenforce the idea that curiosity can lead to great things.
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 ...
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
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.
.DMG files out of each one, and have them automount at startup so he can use all his programs.
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
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
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.