Re: Article on KDE usability for Kids
On Friday 1. December 2006 07:48, Andreas Tille wrote:
> On the other hand I read the article not as "KDE"
> usability but as "Linux" usability. Formerly I had installed
> Gnome at my box and KDE (because claimed as easier to use)
> on the box of my father. Now I'm running xfce. Guess what
> my son likes most?
Yesterday I visited Astri, Snøfrid and Conrad. They made the Snøfrix[1]
distribution tailored to kids back in 2003/2004. When they did the work
choosing applications, Snøfrid and people in the Ministry of Children and
Equality gave feedback. Snøfrid was around 13-14 years old when the first
version of Snøfrix was made (if I remember correctly).
1. http://www.skolelinux.no/~conrad/snofrix.html
Conrad told that they still got e-mail from users from different places in the
world. Lately one parent wrote that their 8 year old daughter wouldn't use
anything else than Snøfrix, after trying a lot of different systems. One of
the strong points with this LiveCD is the documentation. It's really simple
and easy accessible for beginners.
The Snøfrix LiveCD is distributed to all public libraries in Norway. The
Ministry of Children and Equality has distributed +13,000 CDs to the
libraries and other interest groups.
Snøfrix has a many strong points.
1. It's a liveCD with an excellent look and feel made for kids
2. It has exactly the right games for kids - they just love the games
(older kids don't think the games are cool, but when you are
younger than 14 it's just excelent.
3. The selection of programs are done mostly by women
4. Snøfrix has excelent documentation in many languages
5. It's widely distributed
6. The people behind Snøfrix won a prestigious prize in 2004
for promoting free software (see the press collection[2]
2. http://nuug.no/prisen/pressedekning-2004.shtml)
7. The Ministry of Children and Equality and the Norwegian
Consumer Council was backing the project. It's talks
about making a upgraded version.
Best regards
Knut Yrvin
--
Community Manager / Developer Tools - Trolltech ASA
cell: + 47 908 95 765, phone: +47 21 60 27 58
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt
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