Cisco/Linksys lobotimized the WRT54G by halving the flash and ram from the previous version, not to mention locking down access by puting a locked up vxworks on it. It's also quite retarded by having only two real ethernet ports, one attached to a built in six port switch with vlans. Makes some kind of routing impossible, and is less secure as firewall routing rules don't apply to packets that never get seen by the kernel. The WRTSL54GS on the other hand has 32MB ram and 8MB flash, perfect for installing lots more software, and all the ports are true ports, making it fully routable/usable and more secure.
Cisco/Linksys:
When are you going to release a Linux Wireless Router that handles 802.11a/5.4GHz?
Why doesn't Compusa and Best Buy carry the units that can be Linuxatized/made useful?
How about a Linux router without wireless?
I know that if this last product existed, tens of thousands of these could be sold, and that's just to the company I work for.
You've got to start somewhere. Learning on their own is great, but useless without some sort of foundation. The more languages and operating systems they are exposed to, the easier it will be to pick up whatever's current. Yes, I started out with Apple2 BASIC, 6502 machine language, MS-DOS, then moved to Pascal, Fortran, C, UNIX, and I'm still learning new languages and systems today. In short, I agree with you in principle, but by starting out with C, VI, UNIX, etc. today, I'd be giving them the basics to understand the tools of tomorrow. Plus, writing games is a better motivator than learning the tools for technologies sake.
My original point was if you hide all the computer's workings behind an easy to use GUI, you end up with users, not developers or admins. Most of the exceptional programmers I know started very young.
...if it were my kid getting one of these, the first thing I'd do is reformat the drive and show my kid how to install Slackware on it, teach them VI, some basic UNIX commands, and how to write C programs. After working through all the examples in the the K&R book, I'd then show them X/KDE, GIMP, Blender, Glut/OpenGL and SDL programming. I'd have them create their own versions of Pong, BootHill, Space Invaders, Snakes, PacMan, Tetris, and other simple games. Nothing like a bit of game programming to dispel any fear of math and develop logical thinking skills. Later, add a bit of Perl, MySQL, and a bit of Web site development, and you've got one kid that will never be wanting for a good paying job.
MacOS (and RedHat) is nice and all, but if you want your kids to be able to compete against my kids for a technical job, you should forget about making their toys easy to use. Kids can learn this stuff faster than you think.
I'd also consider installing OpenSolaris if the drivers supported it. Too bad accelerated graphics support isn't there yet.
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Cisco/Linksys lobotimized the WRT54G by halving the flash and ram from the previous version, not to mention locking down access by puting a locked up vxworks on it. It's also quite retarded by having only two real ethernet ports, one attached to a built in six port switch with vlans. Makes some kind of routing impossible, and is less secure as firewall routing rules don't apply to packets that never get seen by the kernel.
The WRTSL54GS on the other hand has 32MB ram and 8MB flash, perfect for installing lots more software, and all the ports are true ports, making it fully routable/usable and more secure.
Cisco/Linksys:
When are you going to release a Linux Wireless Router that handles 802.11a/5.4GHz?
Why doesn't Compusa and Best Buy carry the units that can be Linuxatized/made useful?
How about a Linux router without wireless?
I know that if this last product existed, tens of thousands of these could be sold, and that's just to the company I work for.
My original point was if you hide all the computer's workings behind an easy to use GUI, you end up with users, not developers or admins. Most of the exceptional programmers I know started very young.
Yes, I am doing very well today, thank you.
They would be making a $100 laptop themselfs, and give tons of them away to schools. It worked in the Apple 2 days, it could work again.
MacOS (and RedHat) is nice and all, but if you want your kids to be able to compete against my kids for a technical job, you should forget about making their toys easy to use. Kids can learn this stuff faster than you think.
I'd also consider installing OpenSolaris if the drivers supported it. Too bad accelerated graphics support isn't there yet.
Oh wait. No, that wouldn't have worked. Nevermind.