Re: What I need for my kids
Am 2006-11-10 09:26:56, schrieb Andrew Sackville-West:
> That age is definitely difficult. My desire would be to see, not
> necessarily a different DE, but perhaps an appropriate theme. For
Right, Anne-Sophie, my youngest daughter is now 6 1/2 and use
Debian since 4 years and use fvwm. not with 16x16 or 32x32 icons.
We use 64x64 pixel icons and they are many funny symbols taken
from all over the Internet and scanned from packages of toys.
> example, a very simplified desktop using large, fun icons and
> stripping out some of the things that are more complicated for little
> kids: right clicks, middle clicks, nested menus and so forth. The
Ha! - You are thinking like me!
> right combination of look and feel could be built pretty easily (he
> says without any thought...) by theming one of the existing DE's or
> WM's. Populated with the right packages under a meta-package and it
> should be pretty straightforward.
If I find it, I can upload the tdfvwmtheme-4y, but I have no local
copy anymore and maybe my Kids in moroco have a copy of it.
> 1. A big, fun simple interface
> 2. Simplified mouse interaction (something most WM's can handle, I
> think)
> 3. A set of basic apps - paint, draw, type, simple games.
Anne-Sophie like xmahjongg!
Believe it, - children are more inteligent as you are thinking!
> 4. maybe eliminate key-bindings.
Fortunatly I have never assigned some in fvwm!
> 5. passwordless login for kids accounts
Right, I have disabled the password for her too.
Since she know her name and learned how to find the Keys
(I have written it in very big letters on paper) she had
learned how to login.
I use WDM as Display-Manager but I am thinking on making
one with bigger fonts, since it is not realy easy for
little kids to read it (and check, whether they have typed
the name login correctly)
> 6. maybe a seperate set of post-install scripts for setting things up
> in a kid friendly way.
What do you mean with it?
A kid of 3 years put the CD into the drive and install
the Debian-Kids-Cd alone? :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
> that's just some of my thoughts. My kids are currently 5,7,9 and are
> already pretty comfortable with winXP (wifey's box :( ) but I know
> they would be willing testers for something like this.
:-)
> I don't think there's necessarily a dearth of apps for kids that age,
> its more of an interface problem. Really small children do what the OP
> mentioned above -- bash the keyboard and sometimes watch what
> happens. Maybe some kind of kiosk setup would be in order? Have the
> thing boot up running a paint program on the root window (is that
> possible? maybe) and then overlay some icons on top of it for
> launching other stuff like some games. That way, the kids can get
> immediate results by just clicking and dragging on the desktop -- look
> I can draw! and then when they inadvertently click on one of the icons
> they get something else.
I used the FvwmButtons with a button matrix of 12x3 buttons (=768x192pix)
Buttons of 64x64 pixels are ideal.
> > > Finally I've found Freevo (http://freevo.sf.net) that fulfills my
> > > requirements quite well and has been serving well enough so far. There
> > > are still some problems with it: 1. It is not in Debian and at the time
> > > I checked there was no ITP for it; 2. it depends on software not being
> > > present in Debian; 3. and finally it contains significant amount of
> > > bugs.
>
> how are you using freevo in this context?
to 1. It can be packed!
to 2. Which dependances?
to 3. If it has bugs, which kind of it?
> I think for the 1-3 crowd this might not be true -- when it breaks its
> broken and they throw it away or cry about it... your experience may
> vary :) but definitely by 5 this is true. by 9 they are ready to fix
> what they've broken and maybe fix what others have broken.
Anne-Sophie do this since she is 5.
Yeah, - her three bad older sisters (11, 15 and 17)
Thanks, Greetings and nice Day
Michelle Konzack
Systemadministrator
Tamay Dogan Network
Debian GNU/Linux Consultant
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