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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."
Indeed, we are seeing one of the truly powerful features of Debian and Ubuntu: the ability to use them as a solid base for specialized distributions.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Give people Linux in their youth so that they won't be completely computer-brain-dead and M$ vulnerable when they get older! An excellent idea!
Are you a Linux user? Are you a parent?
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Jeremy
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?!! ;)
Yes, _you_ could probably customize it like that. But many teachers, educators, and even school computer system administrators do not have such knowledge and experience. Even though they could easily pick it up, they may not have time to.
Thus a system like this proves to be quite useful. All of the specialized applications are integrated, and provided by default. So teachers can go ahead and install this on their classroom computer, for instance, without having to make sure it's got a network connection so they can download other educational packages.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I'll have the only five year old that knows how to edit an fstab file!
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.
The philosophy and developer base of OSS allows for products to be made to fit niches that big closed source companies like Microsoft can't be bothered to service. The ability to develop to suit the needs of fringe groups is a powerful tool. It's good to see it being fully exploited.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
This would be nice if it had an educational twist on it. Keyboarding skills, math, ABCs, reading comprehension... that'd make a nice replacement for what we have at the school right now, and schools are always interested in low cost or no-cost technology.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
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.
Pfff. Maybe yours doesn't.
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.
Or does apt-get install Oregon Trail work...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
Does the computer operating system a person uses as a child have any predictive value in forseeing what OS a person will use as an adult?
My first memory of a computer in a school was an Apple II+. I remember a program our history teacher used to show how the electoral college works- we all had budgets, knew which states leaned which way, and had to allocate funds to each state. We had an after school computer club that played Bard's Tale on those same computers. We knew the Apple II+ inside and out, we were 11-13 years old and were writing our own programs.
In high school, we all loved the new Apple IIgs systems. We did our homework reports on them. There were programs for our science labs.
But as soon as I hit college, the Pentium was introduced, and there were no Apple computer labs? Even though getting a pirated copy of Windows 98 was easy, there were people using Linux. Why?
I say the #1 reason is money. If someone can't pay for an OS, they will use a different one. Reason #2 is control. If a person can not accomplish a task on an OS, they will search for a different one. Reason #3 is why OS/2 failed- they could not get enough support from third party software companies. There was a computer store nearby that gave out 500 free copies of OS/2. But they had no software titles for sale to go with OS/2.
What OS a person starts out with when young will have ZERO impact on what OS they stay with. OS'es are not like McDonalds, we will not keep going to them into our 30's just because we had lunch there when 7 years old. OS'es are more like a tool, like a hammer. We will go and get the best one we can find for the job. You might as well try and predict what wrist watch a person will wear at age 30 based on what watch they wear in the fourth grade. Or calculator. Or anything. It is just a tool.
If linux is to get more of a market share, then linux needs to improve. Just targeting kids to use linux will not make it more used later in life. Linux could become all Apple was 20 years ago, and they still might not be used in universities or buisness if Linux does not do a better job than the large corporation in Redmond.
How does this compare to Skolelinux, an existing Debian-derived distribution used in schools? Or is it just NIH?
I'm a father of two, and a Linux/Unix sysadmin.
I put Linux (FC4 currently) on my kids' computers. They like it just fine, and neither of them are nerds.
Strange thing, they do fight over which is better, vi or that other editor.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Did you know that the core developers of Ubuntu Linux are employed by the Ubuntu Foundation, which was founded by Mark Shuttleworth (he provided an initial funding commitment of $10 million). He is also:
I'm deeply suspicious of a so-called "educational" distribution put together by people who can't seem to spell "calendar" correctly.
running on Suse 10 at the moment ... but I think I will check this out.
:-)
I am thinking of getting a second old PC so that they can have one each.
My 6 year old has just run a DOS attack on her grandmother.
First she used social engineering to obtain her password,
then she changed it.
Most of what makes Edubuntu different from *buntu isn't actually relevant for home use. To quote the Design Goals:
So if you ignore the child-friendly artwork (not that it's entirely insignificant), what you have (beyond standard *buntu) is:
Unless you're home-schooling (and ideally, homeschooling several families together), or your school is using Edubuntu and you want to standardise on it at home too, this isn't going to be much more helpful to you at home than any other *buntu.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
I've got two kids (5 & 2.5 yr old). They love to use their computer. ...]
I've tried ubuntu (and indeed have currently got it set up for my wife), but I dont think gnome (even stripped) is the best WM/desktop for young kids.
I don't want them to be able to middle-click, bring up a terminal and 'rm -Rf *'.
(how on earth is a 5 yr old gonna do that you may ask ? -- except you will only ask if you dont have a 5 yr old, if you have had one you will know it highly likely).
Infact I dont want them launching hardly any of the progs installed on any particular box.
For my little users GCompris and firefox with cbeebies as a homepage plus a paint prog is all I want.
I know edubuntu aims at a wider age range, that is not my point here
I think for young kids icewm is easier to strip and create a safe environment for them to play.
It wouldn't be interesting to 7+ yr olds, but then 7+ yr olds are very different. A one size catches all (which edubuntu aims for) is not, therefore, I think the best approach.
Just my 2c
[p.s. geez wierd sh*t man, I never thought I'd be posting here as a parent. Time flies
When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in to the sea
Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu... I want Pornubuntu.
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2B1ASK1
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Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Strange thing, they do fight over which is better, vi or that other editor.
And you say they aren't nerds?
Both desktop environments appear to have very good internationalization.
m l and http://www.gnome.org/i18n/
For Gnome: http://www.gnome.org/start/2.12/notes/en/rni18.ht
For KDE: http://i18n.kde.org/stats/gui/stable/toplist.php
So, currently Gnome supports* 43 languages, and KDE supports 23 languages.**
It is not at all obvious to me how KDE's internationalization is so superior. If you could explain your rather blanket statement, I would appreciate it. Otherwise, it seems to me that both desktops have excellent internationalization. Kudos to both KDE and Gnome.
* "supports" defined as at least 80% of strings translated.
** Note: I'm sure KDE will support more languages as their 3.5.1 release comes out: the x.y.1 usually has a lot of attention devoted to translations.
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dissertus scribendo latine videri volo.
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.
And here all this time I thought I was an American because I lived in the US. Turns out I'm just part of the white dominating force that has conquered the US from the natives.
"Honey, junior said his first RTFM!"
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
1. You have separate user accounts, right? Use them.
2. If you are afraid they will wipe their own directory, make a copy (eg in your directory), doesn't need to be a serious backup.
3. Not sure if your system has this, but I can create a new login, without logging out. Applications --> System Tools --> New Login, on my Debian system. It will lock your screen and create a new login. You can switch between them with ctrl-alt-F7 and higher. If your kid does this, that's what the locked screen is for.
4. Your kid will not *randomly* type `rm -rf *`, though it is very likely they would hear about said command and try it. It'll be a good lesson. That's where the backup comes in.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways