Edubuntu - Linux For Young Human Beings! 308
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 is valuable, why? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's too bad they didn't base it off of Kubuntu. (Score:2, Interesting)
Thankfully it is quite easy to install KDE on an Ubuntu system anyways. But it would be far more convenient for administrators and teachers to already have such fantastic and easy-to-use functionality installed by default.
Specialized distributions are actually the key. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Give it a try. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Montessori School (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
5 kids (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:parents who use linux? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:It's too bad they didn't base it off of Kubuntu (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's a fantastic timesaver. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ubuntu provides an excellent base. (Score:3, Interesting)
What's next? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Excellent (Score:2, Interesting)
<rant>Yeah, who needs that whole "compatibility" thing anyway?
All joking aside, I understand what you're saying, but I think your views are a little extreme. I think that people as a whole should be better informed about security issues and whatnot, but most people couldn't care less about what goes on inside their computer. Personally, I can't say I blame them.
BTW, for the record, I've been writing computer programs as a hobby for the past 17 years, and I'm a Linux user myself, so don't take this as being anti-OSS/Linux.</rant>
Re:It's too bad they didn't base it off of Kubuntu (Score:3, Interesting)
The article also reminded me of this blog [blogspot.com]I read sometimes ago. Its author (a kde dev) works for a company who provides linux solutions for - among other things - schools. The idea of an Office Suite aimed specifically at kids is very interesting, and you can see nice mockups of such a possibilities. Seeing the pictures commented Forget the children. Make this for my 58 year-old mother - and there is a part two [blogspot.com] where the developer further elaborates on the idea. Actually they are looking for volunteers to implement it:
Perhaps the strong focus on education (the edutainment package has a very active developer community behind it) was one of the reasons why Mark Shuttleworth "promoted" KDE (or rather, Kubuntu) to a tier 1 status when the Novell thing happend a few weeks ago.NetNanny? (Score:3, Interesting)
One that I found after a google search was http://dansguardian.org/?page=whatisdg [dansguardian.org]
I know the Slashdot crowd is generally against censorship, but would a children's Linux distribution be appropriate to have censorship as default.
Re:What happened to Apple? (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't you think it's weird how originally, computers were Unix based, then Windows and Mac came along, basically stealing crap from Xerox (a Unix-alike based initiative) and then we're slowly moving back to Unix with Linux and MacOSX?
Re:NetNanny? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Can Linux print photos? :) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is valuable, why? (Score:2, Interesting)
I have a 10 year old and 5 year old. They both use Debian 3.1 on the machine they share. My 10 year old loves the facts that there were so many free games to install on the OS and she can choose from a ton of "pretty" desktop themes. The only issue we ran in to was when she was running out of room (one 10 gig hard drive) and wanted a little more space. To my amazement, she just asked if we can "delete windows" because she didn't use it any more. I removed Windows, but still ended up throwing in another hard drive because hdd's are so cheap nowadays. On another note, I'll be installing Ubuntu on my friend's machine (dual boot with XP). I showed my machine to her daughter and she liked the eye candy as well. The only questions she had was "can I use the yahoo IM client and AIM?" - showed her Gaim - she was amazed that it handled both clients and more. "Can I still use Word and Excel?" - showed her OpenOffice - looked good to her. Lastly, "does it got any cool games?" - showed her the games area on my menu - definitely caught her attention.
Linux not for kids my ass.
I agree, it's as silly as saying Windows is not for kids. However, now with Edubuntu, it would seem to me that Linux is (and can more easily be) geared more for kids than Windows.
FreeDuc was there first!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What happened to Apple? (Score:3, Interesting)
New to Slashdot, eh?
Overall, I agree with you completely (except not expecting adults to use Lego). Had I started my computer experience with Windows, I fully expect I would not currently work in IT/CS/SE/whatever. Not for the classic "Windowz sux" battlecry; but rather, because Windows doesn't challenge the user to improve themselves. The user has no motivation to learn how the underlying OS works, much less the hardware itself. Hell, at least DOS came with qbasic - XP doesn't come with any programming interface included with the core OS.
Compare that with my first computer - At school, a TRS-80, and at home, a Coleco Adam. They didn't come up to a friendly screen telling you exactly what to do... They came up to a BASIC interpreter prompt as the primary user interface. Learning to "use" the computer meant learning to program.
As much of an improvement as I saw upgrading to my first PC clone, I remember feeling cheated that I could choose between crappy resolution with 4 colors or slightly less crappy in black and white. And how do you make a simple 3-voice sound? You just couldn't, directly. So I learned how the machine actually generated sound, and that I would need to go a tad bit lower-level to get anything beyond single-voice square-wave sound (for graphics, I just had to wait for VGA, no way around it sucking with CGA).
But all that, while perhaps sounding like a nightmare to the typical "I just want to use Word" user, encouraged me rather than turning me off on the whole thing.
Hmm, I don't seem to have a point here... I suppose just that the more OSs and even hardware platforms we expose kids to, the less they'll mistake "Windows" and "computer" as synonymous terms.
You could use a dremel in a drill press and make really nice holes in just about anything. But you can do so much more with it freehand.
I respectfully disagree (Score:2, Interesting)
What they shared, and the basis for my premise, were multi-user, multi-tasking command-line environments that demanded verbal agility and procedural thinking (here, I am *NOT* using procedural as the antonym of object-oriented; I am simply using it in a methodical, incremental context). Both paved the way for my comfort with linux a decade and a half later and predisposed me to prefer *nix operating systems.
It would be a logical fallacy for me to presume my experience and choices would be universal, or that one's childhood OS predetermines one's adult usage, but I think it's fair to say that what one learns at an impressionable age could REASONABLY presage one's choices of computing environment as an adult.