My granddaughters are getting pc for Christmas. It will be an old
PIII with just the basics, CDROM and music apps and kids games, no
network capability for now. Naturally, I want it to be a Slack box,
that being the easiest for me to admin. But, I was thinking maybe
going with edubuntu, at least until I can see what it has to offer and
then maybe getting the apps, games, etc, and setting up a slack
equivalent. Anyone with kid/slack experience/advice?

nb

Hi nb,

On Sat, 23 Dec 2006 17:18:51 -0600, notbob wrote:
> My granddaughters are getting pc for Christmas. It will be an old
> PIII with just the basics, CDROM and music apps and kids games, no
> network capability for now. Naturally, I want it to be a Slack box,
> that being the easiest for me to admin. But, I was thinking maybe
> going with edubuntu, at least until I can see what it has to offer and
> then maybe getting the apps, games, etc, and setting up a slack
> equivalent. Anyone with kid/slack experience/advice?

Maybe one of the BSDs are a good alternative? They run well on older
hardware, and there are probably a load of educational applications and
fun games in the port collections. It's the closest thing to Slack that
has loads of applications to choose from .

http://www.freshports.org/ provides a nice searchable database of FreeBSD
ports.

-- Daniel

notbob wrote:
> My granddaughters are getting pc for Christmas. It will be an old
> PIII with just the basics, CDROM and music apps and kids games, no
> network capability for now. Naturally, I want it to be a Slack box,
> that being the easiest for me to admin. But, I was thinking maybe
> going with edubuntu, at least until I can see what it has to offer and
> then maybe getting the apps, games, etc, and setting up a slack
> equivalent. Anyone with kid/slack experience/advice?
>
> nb
Sometime back Knoppix had a bootable CD, Knoppix for kids
Tehcnologies in k-1 Education

http://www.osef.org/

This might give you some ideas

notbob wrote:
> My granddaughters are getting pc for Christmas. It will be an old
> PIII with just the basics, CDROM and music apps and kids games, no
> network capability for now. Naturally, I want it to be a Slack box,
> that being the easiest for me to admin. But, I was thinking maybe
> going with edubuntu, at least until I can see what it has to offer and
> then maybe getting the apps, games, etc, and setting up a slack
> equivalent. Anyone with kid/slack experience/advice?

Hmm.
I've a lot of experience with slack, very little experience with
kids in general and no experience at all with granddaughters.
Do you still want my advice?

I think that, if you can give your granddaughters right now
a Slack box that fulfills their needs and expectations for
some time, there is no need to switch to another distribution.
Like you said it would be the easiest for you to admin.
Don't setup a system that you don't know yourself; it can become
a disaster to manage with a few granddaughters that are pulling
at your mouse and keyboard. :-)

I think it's better to prepare the installation of additional
apps, games, etc. quietly in your own environment. It's better
to see for yourself what edubuntu, or any other distribution, has
to offer before installing it on your granddaughters pc.
If there is no urgent need to switch in a hurry right now to a
distribution you're not comfortable with: don't do it.
You can always switch at a later time if you need.

Regards,

Kees.

--
Kees Theunissen.

On Sat, 23 Dec 2006 17:18:51 -0600, notbob wrote:

> My granddaughters are getting pc for Christmas. It will be an old
> PIII with just the basics, CDROM and music apps and kids games, no
> network capability for now. Naturally, I want it to be a Slack box,
> that being the easiest for me to admin. But, I was thinking maybe
> going with edubuntu, at least until I can see what it has to offer and
> then maybe getting the apps, games, etc, and setting up a slack
> equivalent. Anyone with kid/slack experience/advice?
>
> nb

What's the cpu speed, and how much ram? Those are going to be crucial
factors in determining what desktop manager to run. IMHO much less than
800mhz and 512mb makes using gnome or kde rather tedious - better to go
with XFCE or Enlightenment (or your own favorite 'light' desktop). Given
the horsepower, I think the edubuntu would be a deceant choice. I'd also
look at installing Dan's Guardian for internet content filtering.

notbob <notbob@nothome.com> wrote:

> My granddaughters are getting pc for Christmas. It will be an old
> PIII with just the basics, CDROM and music apps and kids games, no
> network capability for now. Naturally, I want it to be a Slack
> box, that being the easiest for me to admin.

And making it impossible for anyone else in the family to admin,
right, asshole? Naturally.

Some people will go to any lengths to be "needed."

cordially, as always,

rm

rm@biteme.org writes:

> notbob <notbob@nothome.com> wrote:
>
>> My granddaughters are getting pc for Christmas. It will be an old
>> PIII with just the basics, CDROM and music apps and kids games, no
>> network capability for now. Naturally, I want it to be a Slack
>> box, that being the easiest for me to admin.
>
> And making it impossible for anyone else in the family to admin,
> right, asshole? Naturally.
>
> Some people will go to any lengths to be "needed."

And a happy, cordial Christmas to you too rm.

Notbob, I have two children here, 9 and 5, playing around on a Slack box
with no problems at all. The younger doesn't do much, the older does work
with OpenOffice, e-mail with Thunderbird (no I haven't taught him to use
Gnus yet), browses the WWW with Firefox and so on.

Speed is important - someone mentioned XFce and on older software that
might help.

Games - well a standard Slack install comes with quite a few. Supertux,
ppracer and frozen-bubble are all available on the Slackbuilds site

http://www.slackbuilds.org/repository/games/

Pathological builds easily enough.



There are Tuxpaint packages for Slackware here - heck I like fiddling
with this one :-)

http://www.tuxpaint.org/download/linux-slackware/

A general link about using Linux with 3-7 year olds

http://www.fraw.org.uk/download/cltc/cltc_pb-02.html

Mores software
http://www.childrenslinux.com/?gclid...FQo-EQod9062NA

Hth

Glyn
--
RTFM http://www.tldp.org/index.html
GAFC http://slackbook.org/ The Official Source :-)
STFW http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...inux.slackware
JFGI http://jfgi.us/

rm@biteme.org wrote:

> notbob <notbob@nothome.com> wrote:
>
>> My granddaughters are getting pc for Christmas. It will be an old
>> PIII with just the basics, CDROM and music apps and kids games, no
>> network capability for now. Naturally, I want it to be a Slack
>> box, that being the easiest for me to admin.
>
> And making it impossible for anyone else in the family to admin,
> right, asshole? Naturally.
>

Dear oh dear, another reply riddled with assumptions and lack of tact. The
fact of the matter is that 99.9% of the population cannot admin a PC
(whatever the OS). If the OP can than then he and his family are better off
than most.

> Some people will go to any lengths to be "needed."
>

And we all know how far you will go to look a complete idiot. I just love
your posts. Keep 'em coming.

Ian
> cordially, as always,
>
> rm

Ian Bell wrote:
> rm@biteme.org wrote:
>
.... snip ...
>>
>> And making it impossible for anyone else in the family to admin,
>> right, asshole? Naturally.
>
> Dear oh dear, another reply riddled with assumptions and lack of
> tact. The fact of the matter is that 99.9% of the population cannot
> admin a PC (whatever the OS). If the OP can than then he and his
> family are better off than most.
>
>> Some people will go to any lengths to be "needed."
>
> And we all know how far you will go to look a complete idiot. I
> just love your posts. Keep 'em coming.

Just PLONK and ignore him. That way the rest of us don't have to
see his silly vituperations, and he won't be amused and encouraged.

--
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy New Year
Joyeux Noel, Bonne Annee.
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
<http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>

notbob wrote:
> My granddaughters are getting pc for Christmas. It will be an old
> PIII with just the basics, CDROM and music apps and kids games, no
> network capability for now. Naturally, I want it to be a Slack box,

This is not going to be a popular opinion here, but as an ex-K-8 school
computer tech, I have to recommend considering Windows for this
application. Problem is that way too much of the software that to kids
might want to run is only available for Windows (and often barely runs
there). An old box is probably going to be too limited to run virtual
machines, and WINE looks to me like a better bet for an office
environment where there will be only a handful of Windows aps that have
to be run somehow.

If you are sure that the system just needs to do web browsing, word
processing and play a few simple games, and if there is enough memory
to run a Linux GUI without ghastly delays, disregard my suggestion and
use Slackware.

It's up to you of course, but at the very least, I'd consider setting
up a dual boot (LOADLIN is often the least painful way) with Windows 9
-- assuming that the boxes come with Windows 9 installed.