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Edubuntu - Linux For Young Human Beings!
hzs202 writes "Are you a Linux user? Are you a parent? If so there is something that the two have in common. Edubuntu is a newly released fork of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. It is targeted at children from the ages of 5-12 years old. There are lots of games and even kindergarten appropriate activities for children. The developers and supporters of Edubuntu have developed a Manifesto which lays out the intent and objective of this open-source and freely distributed OS development effort. The current stable version is Edubuntu 5.10 'Breezy Badger', the same as Ubuntu 5.10's alias. Edubuntu comes complete with installations for x86 and AMD64 architecture. Edubuntu will be a nice addition to your home-network."
This seems slightly pointless, as I could take a standard Ubuntu system and install educational apps I want myself. That way, the entire family could use the system and not have to look at the bright colors and corny applications which are installed by default. Besides, what 5 year old can install Edubuntu?!! ;)
Actually, this is the best way for new distributions to go. They build upon a solid base, like Debian or Ubuntu, and thus free themselves from the tedious work of maintaining a base system.
Yet they are also able to add value to the system, targeting a specific user group. In Kubuntu's case it is KDE users. In this case it is educational users. Such systems offer all of the benefits of Ubuntu, while also offering their own specific additions.
It's much the situation that arose in the 1970s, when people really started building software upon fairly common or standardized libraries (ie. what became the C standard library, POSIX, etc.), rather than writing it all from scratch. This time it is people building specific functionality upon a solid Linux distribution base.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Give Ubuntu a try. Personally, I'd suggest using the Kubuntu variant, as it offers KDE rather than GNOME. You'll immediately notice the benefits it offers, especially if you have used distributions like Red Hat/Fedora, Mandrake/Mandriva or SuSE in the past.
What you'll notice is that it offers the power of Debian. Packages are extremely easy to install. Far easier than with Red Hat or SuSE, for instance. Upgrades are painless and very easy, too.
What I found to be the best feature, however, was the extreme stability of it. It's a rock-solid system, while proving very recent releases at the same time. I found it to be more stable than Fedora, for instance. I'm not sure if that's just because there may be more people maintaining the Debian packages, but regardless the increased stability is a fantastic feature.
The Ubuntu community is great. It is very friendly, and people are always willing to help out.
Others have found that it's the perfect platform to build specialized distributions upon. You get all the power and stability of Debian, with the support of the Ubuntu community, and in the end the result is a fabulous system.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I recently showed Edubuntu to my 5 year old's school.
They were very interested.
Many of the games were like the Montessori method of teaching.
Agreed. This is why Linux has trouble going mainstream. We the /.'ers can do it ourselves, but the vast majority of people can't. Sheep like whatever pasture they're given, whether or not the smart sheep have built a cool looking bridge to a much better pasture with fewer bugs and wolf-protection and vi.
The only thing that is still lacking from this kind of thing, though, is the momentum to drive it through to more than just a few educators. If someone gave schools, especially public ones, science equipment and musical instruments and the like, in addition to a herd of Linux geeks to install this for the schools on their existing hardware (or give new hardware as needed), it could really take off. Apple, Microsoft, Dell, etc., like to make "community development" donations that go beyond just their computers/software, and this is what gets many on their platforms.
Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu... I want Pornubuntu.
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2B1ASK1
I know the Slashdot crowd is generally against censorship, but would a children's Linux distribution be appropriate to have censorship as default. To be honest, censorship is one thing, and having your kid redirected to websites unfit to be mentioned in the classroom is another ... If this is to be used in a classroom full of 7year olds, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to let the teacher filter out some of the pr0n, if at least for sanity's sake.