On Sat, 15 May 2004 00:31:20 +0200 Rudi Effe <Rudi.Effe@gmx.de> wrote: > Dear developers, dear supporters, dear users of linux! [snip] > ___ > read & spread > by rUdi. Hi Rudi, I work as a volounteer for a small elementary school helping them with their IT needs. I've set up quite a lot for a school of that size here in Belgium, don't know the situation in other countries. We have 2 servers at the moment, one server runs Debian, one FreeBSD and next week some 15 client ps's will run Debian (I did a succesfull experiment with 6 pc's for about 4 months). The rest of the clients run Windows 98 for now. The children are very aware that it isn't Windows, some even asked me how to install it on their home pc. They know how to work with it, everything is translated to Dutch after all, so no language problems. Some absolutly adore Gnome and most kids I've talked about it even understand what a WM / Desktop Environment is. They work with Firefox, Abiword, The Gimp, Gnumeric, Nautilus every day without any problem, and more imporatant for them: without blue screens of death. Next week I'm going to change the Desktop Environment to KDE and Abi & Gnumeric to KOffice. I now know they can handle different GUI's and I feel they'll have a significant advantage over other kids who've only worked on Windows. But they know it's Gnome, they know it's Abiword, they know it's Firefox, ... They know it's Debian, it's not just 'Linux' to them. I told the 'older' ones that Linux is just the kernel of the operating system and I think they get it, not like we look at a kernel, but still. I support the views and ideas described in your mail, it's important to let the children see another operating system, to let the world know Windows isn't the only OS, but without proper explanation the children in the school I work for would think 'Linux' is Gnome. What I'm trying to say is that when it comes to children, I don't feel it's ok to just let them use an operating system, you have to inform them as well. It doesn't matter if the operating system is a flavour of GNU/Linux, *BSD,... as long as they understand what everything is. I didn't find that in your mail, but all this is just IMHO. I'm absolutly no teacher btw, just another geek helping an elementary school. Regards, Timothy btw, I'm not sure if this belongs on -devel. If not, my apologies.
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