>I have never tried Trisquel Sugar TOAST
>https://trisquel.info/en/download
>but my understanding is that its desktop environment is intended to be
healthy for children
>to interface with.
I installed Sugar on Debian for a 5 year old once and it was a terrible
experience. Terrible for me installing the games and apps and maintaining the
system (many of them wouldn't install and I could not find an easy way to
debug). The interface was very clunky and counter intuitive, if I remember
correctly the mouse pointer was oversized and difficult to achieve any kind
of precision. It has a very interesting community component, but it is
useless if there's nobody else using Sugar in the community. The 5 year old
disliked it and was very frustrated trying to navigate the interface.
I removed it and installed Xfce, then downloaded all the apps and games and
placed nice looking icons on the desktop (I forget which programs exactly,
Tux Paint, some that have many games inside them, a Mr. Potato app, a note
taking app (I think Leafpad). Tux Paint was very successful. Some touch
typing learning programs were quite fun for the 5 year old too, especially
the single letter typing challenges and the levels that dealt with
familiarizing oneself with the keyboard.
Then the kid's parents gave her an old Android tablet full of games featuring
the favorite Disney characters and other culture industry crap and the kid
never used the laptop again. In this case the op is also the parent, so the
story may have a happier ending.
Peer pressure at school can also make it tough. On the one hand I would not
like my son/daughter to grow up manipulated by all the consumer crap (I find
the Disney princesses ideology particularly pernicious), on the other hand I
would not like my son/daughter to grow up feeling left out. Tough to find a
like-minded community, though perhaps possible.
