Get'em while they're young!

It's bad manners to talk of a different distro on a dedicated forum, and if I offend anyone I apologize. However, it occurs to me that the Apple model of building acceptance and future market of giving away computers to schools is unbeatable. All those kids who were brought up with Apple are now full grown, purchasing adults, and look what that did to the brand.

Today it's no longer necessary to give away computers, just about every household has one or more, and this could be a great help to Linux. What started me thinking about this was the discovery of an Ubuntu based fork called Quimo for Kids. This is a release aimed strictly at kids from age 3 up, and I think it's great.

I introduced my 4 year old grand daughter to it on a live cd. It took a few minutes for her to
develop the coordination to use the mouse and click on objects, but within 15 minutes she was jumping around between applications like a pro. The distro contains games, reading and math excercises, memory training games, etc. The kid was hooked, and a fight developed when her 3 year old sister demanded a turn.

I can't think of a better way to introduce Linux to the young, and who knows maybe they'll stick with it as they grow.

We don't mind talking about other distros. I think most of the major distros have education based distros aimed at children.

OpenSuse's is http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Education-Li-f-e

I haven't looked into any of these much, because I have no need too but beleive Welan has played with some.

Thanks for that link. I downloaded the iso, and am amazed at the wide ranging applications of this compilation. I had a good look at GCompris, which is aimed at the same age group as the one served by Quimo, and it appers to be quite a bit more sophisticated in terms of content. Childsplay unfortunately was not included on the DVD, but it seems like it may be similar as well.

The only problem is that there are too many places where a wrong click will get small kids lost quickly. In this respect Quimo is the winner due to being more restrictive.

I intend to take the DVD to the school where my older grand children attend to see if they would consider using openSUSE for the next age group. I believe there would be a great deal of merit in going open source for the cash strapped school system.

Shawn Powers over at Linux Journal is a big advocate of just that. The hard part is finding school IT admins that aren't scared of Linux. The few I've been around are die hard Mac fans.

[quote="bdquick" The few I've been around are die hard Mac fans.[/quote]

So I'm finding out. Apple had a great idea when they started giving away computers to the schools.. It created a following that' borders on the fanatical. The teachers I talked to were very impressed, but powerless to affect changes.