> I thought you might be interested in this review of Edubuntu: > > http://www.bloggingbaby.com/entry/1234000340071196/ > > I know (as several readers vociferously noted :) that Edubuntu is for > families, but there are many reasons to want to adopt it to home use as > well. This article takes that angle, and comes out very much in support > of your work. I have to say that, having last installed Linux 9 years > ago, I was VERY impressed with how smoothly it went. Ubuntu/Edubuntu is > a reall hallmark of progress.
Of course Edubuntu is for families :) Right now my 6-year and 3-year old have started testing it on the home family PC (the 1-year old still has few years to go before his beta tester time). I have set up Edubuntu on a separate partition, with an auto-login setup into the kids user account (an non-administrative account) at boot time. My 6-year old only had to learn how to navigate a very simplified grub menu to select between Win98 and Edubuntu, and to learn how to logoff and reboot dad or mom when they are logged into what he calls "linux" (i.e a normal Breezy for our grownup online activities). So now he can get into Edubuntu quite easily from a turned off computer, or from any of the OS in that triple-boot family PC. Until now he has not really ventured out of gcompris. I have setup a couple of icons on the desktop for gcompris, and the web browser (that default into pbskids.org; a favourite site of his). The plan is to put the applications they really like as icons on the desktop for easy access, beside some of the music file they like to listen, and icons to specific web sites. For that age group I would say that a few select icons on the desktop is probably a lot better than navigating the gnome-menus to select what he wants to run. By the way, the default background image was quite popular with the 3-year old :) I suspect at one point down the road we will consolidate all the family users account into one single distro, with the parents using the default ubuntu artworks in their account, and the kids with an edubuntu artwork in their account(s). But for now a separate partition with the autologin was the easiest way to go instead of trying to teach them the concept of user names/passwords of a normal ubuntu setup. -- Daniel Robitaille -- edubuntu-devel mailing list edubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-devel
