Ask HN: Best Linux distro for a young kid’s first computer?
My 3 year old told me the other day that they want to be able to push buttons like daddy does at work. So now, ridiculous as it may be :D, I am working on repurposing an old desktop into their first computer. The idea is mostly just to teach them to use a mouse, keyboard, and maybe play some simple games.
At the moment, I am planning to install a lightweight Linux distro as the OS. Has anyone done anything similar? Any recommendations on a kid friendly distro? I am leaning towards using Elementary OS at the moment, but I’m not sure what else I’d put there.
Thanks internet friends!
29 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] thread(My sons used OpenBSD from ages two to four or five---I don't think they even realized that it was there, or what it was. They were more intent on playing gcompris, watching cartoons by way of a helper script I put on the desktop and experimenting with whatever piqued their interest at the moment.)
Another idea - if there aren't any real requirements from the system other than allowing your kid to poke around - try something like Haiku. It's not Linux but it's interesting and different and is still Unix-like.
I am not certain which distro best fits that requirement. Perhaps the latest Fedora. [2] My only gripe with Fedora is their latest Beta has integrated a store into the desktop and like Microsoft Windows interacts with their servers throughout desktop navigation a.k.a. Telemetry. That said, it's a shiny polished product with decent documentation and many years of battle hardening.
[1] - https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/how-to-set-n...
[2] - https://getfedora.org/
Give them books and building toys but for a desktop computer (def no tablets) stick with learning file systems and just writing/drawing programs, just my opinion but I’d lay off the games until they are older.
I notice a stark contrast in how my little ones behavior changes if I let them watch age appropriate TV or watch me play Switch games, even in small amounts… might seem extreme but I don’t want to set them up for a harder time through consumer oriented dopamine hacking so I’m taking what may seem like a radical approach. Especially after seeing the opposite approach consistently leading to parents putting their 7 year olds on Ritalin. Diet is hugely important as well… ok I’m done preaching hope it helps someone.
There are ways to automate some usage limits in Linux/Unix. One could use PAM limits to prevent logins to/from particular times of the day/night and to limit how long one may be logged in. These limits should be explained to the child so they are not as upset when the system logs them out. Perhaps find a way to put the system to sleep so that unsaved game progress is less likely to be lost.
Maybe eventually you can shift them over to a raspberry pi since they have a lot of children's educational hardware and software as well, but maybe for children a bit older than yours currently.
Mint + Pico 8 or TIC-80 for explorative gaming has been a fairly good formula for us. I'm thinking of writing an oldschool text adventure on TIC-80 with him, so he'd 1) learn command line input and 2) develop language and grammar skills at the same time. Computers are not all that bad, yknow.
Prior to the current combo, I was thinking of some FreeDOS based system, because of its simplicity, and since cheesy Intel machines are available for nothing. I also considered this homebrew Z80 computer with BASIC -- for wich we, on all those romantic Father And Son Evenings, would build extra-primitive, ultra-distraction-free text adventures: https://rc2014.co.uk/
But, eventually, I realized that First-Graders These Days are already socializing online, so it is (unfortunately) fairly impossible to avoid something like Discord etc. For that, a machine with only DOS, some Forth or BASIC obviously won't do, but oh well. Now our son is playing a lot of Minecraft, including on servers, but his online behavior seems surprisingly mature or careful. Our household rule still states that he must not spend more than 1 hour on gaming every day, but, obviously, he is fairly creative in finding ways to "show Dad that Minecraft castle, but, uh, hey, I just noticed it needs 15 minutes of improvements, hold on".
Overall, I have found that our son seems to naturally prefer games with low-res graphics. He doesn't like ultra-realistic stuff. Really happy to notice this -- it's kind of like reading a book or drawing where the "realistic movie" is running only in your head. This is great for thinking, I guess.
An immutable OS may be overkill but it was also a bit of an experiment for me to see how well it worked as a desktop given the restrictions and limitations at the time. It is a bit smoother now as progress is made with flatpaks etc
Now she is almost 8, we are building a new PC together and it will have a bit more horsepower, so we will likely be installing Linux Mint on it. I do think it's nice to have something user friendly. I personally am a huge fan of Linux Mint Mate edition and she sees me use it, so we likely will stick with the same on both our PC's.
goals