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Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old
- meddlepal 10y agoWhat an unfortunate name... I can only imagine telling a young kid he uses "Doo Doo Linux"
- pmontra 10y agoI'm not an English native speaker and I don't live in an English speaking country so I may miss something. Doo Doo sounds fine to me, very childish.
- cheiVia0 10y agohttp://www.dictionary.com/browse/doo-doo http://www.dictionary.com/browse/doo-doo
- pmontra 10y agoThanks. Yeah, let's say it's a choice that risks undervaluing the product ;-)
- mwfunk 10y agoChildish is an ironic way to describe it. :) It is a term that only small children use, but almost all American children at least know what it means even if they don't say it all the time. I just realized that it's strange that there would be a slang term only used by children, but that remained in use by generation after generation of children over a period of at a minimum 50 years but probably much longer. I'm not a parent, but I suspect that it's a word used by American parents during potty training, hence its longevity.
- fdgdasfadsf 10y agoIt is not strange at all. Some languages have a whole way of speaking only used by children.
- jacquesm 10y agoKids here are still telling the exact same jokes kids were telling each other 45 years ago. Why would only adults have lasting memes?
- saalaa 10y agoDoudou [1] is French for a kid's favorite, day and night, bring everywhere teddy bear. You can see further francophone influence in the use of SPIP (the CMS used for the website). [1] http://dictionnaire.reverso.net/francais-anglais/doudou http://dictionnaire.reverso.net/francais-anglais/doudou
- memsom 10y agoBut in English, a "Doo-doo" is one of a kids favourite pass times before they are capable of doing much other than drinking milk and sleeping. If Google "doo doo", and you get a lot of pictures of excrement (NSFW, probably).
- saalaa 10y agoYou should bring that to the attention of the developers.
- kwhitefoot 10y agoAmerican English.
- memsom 10y agoNo, it's well known in British English too. I don't speak American English.
- aoloe 10y agoThen just google for doudou instead of doo-doo, and pronounce it dow dow...
- deskamess 10y agoYou never know... sometimes that will pique a child's curiosity. They are easily charmed by bodily noises and toilet humor!
- pmontra 10y agoThe home page is all about booting from CD-ROM drives but luckily it boots also from USB keys http://www.doudoulinux.org/web/english/documentation-7/article/get-doudoulinux.html http://www.doudoulinux.org/web/english/documentation-7/artic...
- mwfunk 10y agoFrom their "Translator's FAQ" (which I think is meant for volunteers to help with localization): "How should I tell to pronounce DoudouLinux? In French and Chinese it is pronounced “doodoolinux”. However as the word “doodoo” has a weird meaning in slang American English, we recommend English-speakers to say it as if it was an English word, the way they prefer to say it. We also ask to not write “doodoolinux” at all to avoid any confusion (except here!). Of course if pronouncing the word the French way has no awful meaning in your language, please tell to use this pronunciation." I'm not sure I understand what they mean by "say it as if it was an English word" though. * http://www.doudoulinux.org/web/english/contribute/translate-doudoulinux/article/translator-s-faq.html#1.11 http://www.doudoulinux.org/web/english/contribute/translate-...
- hollander 10y agoStarting out with a name that has a weird meaning in English - not a good idea. It's difficult to find a name that sounds good in all languages and has no offending meaning, but it's not impossible.
- partycoder 10y agoReminds me a bit of the One Laptop Per Child project, which according to some people is a little bit defunct. They produced a distro called Sugar (https://www.sugarlabs.org https://www.sugarlabs.org) that might be worth looking into. Now tablets have largely overcome laptops as an inexpensive computing device for children. EDIT: not defunct as people let me know. thanks for pointing this out.
- yunruse 10y agoI just donated $100 to OLPC yesterday, so I might be swayed here, but I think laptops still fit the cheap-to-produce educational niche – the newer models have a tablet mode, but a flat tablet couldn't easily hold the wifi antennas needed for community-based "intra"net.
- willvarfar 10y agoYeah the early OLPC thing seems to have got derailed with the whole Windows and CEO nonsense and lost the NH-style techies rooting for it :(
- oever 10y ago> which according to some people is a little bit defunct The blog is active. http://blog.laptop.org/ http://blog.laptop.org/ > Now tablets have largely overcome laptops as an inexpensive computing device for children. Children get exposed to horrible devices a lot. The One Laptop Per Child project gives children a device that is sturdy, energy efficient, easy to repair, and comes with full editable source code and no ties to brainwashing data thieves like Google and Facebook.
- partycoder 10y agoAgreed. And tablets are very opaque too, UIs hide all the internals and don't leave much to learn... as opposed to early home computers like the ZX Spectrum, which exposed people to programming right away.
- pjmlp 10y ago
- mhd 10y agoWhere does this mention home schooling?
- vegabook 10y agoprecisely. Seems like somebody is keen to overlay some homeschooling "angle" on this.
- Sykox 10y agoSorry buddy! I am member of group called Alt India (Stands for Alternative Education in India) And focus on home schooling I got the mail from them titled home schooler OS and i thoought to share it here. Here is the original text: This is a homeschooler's must. Every homeschooler should have a copy - and use it! It is the future of computing... Download, burn a DVD, use and distribute freely without the fear - and embarrassment - of stealing software and passing it around, unethically! It also teaches our children not to e-steal...anything! from: muriel&mario' anothergoa@gmail.com Reply-To: alt-ed-india@yahoogroups.com
- mhd 10y agoAh, okay. Was just surprised because of the French origins of this distribution (AFAIK home schooling isn't an issue in highly secular France).
- vertex-four 10y agoI'm aware of a small but thriving home ed community in France - tying home education exclusively to fundamentalist religion is something that's pretty much only a US thing.
- Sykox 10y agoOh no! there is small but growing community in India too. I myself am a homeschooler and now more and more people want their kids homeschooled
- palerdot 10y agoA better webpage would be nice, something on the lines of ubuntu (https://www.ubuntu.com/ https://www.ubuntu.com/)
- willvarfar 10y agoI tried Doudou, and then Qimo, and finally gave up and gave my kids xubuntu. The sad truth is that the childrens games like Childs Play are sad stale games with hopeless UIs and glaring bugs like mislabelled animals in quizzes and things. I have lots of feedback from watching my kids learning to use and play with Doudou and Qimo; even though it is several years ago now, I think - from looking at the screenshots - that nothing much has changed :( http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/19500788060/my-tech-savvy-generation http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/19500788060/my-te... I hope there are modern set of games produced, but I'd imagine they'd be better served over http into the browser than as native apps.
- vanderZwan 10y agoI think the another issue with most of these "for kids" environments is that they have low ceilings of mastery. You know, like the "low barrier to entry, high ceiling" principle of Smalltalk? Usually because of some misguided desire to shelter them and keep them safe. Also, I started out on DOS at the age of six, with the left-over computer my parents had after they upgraded the server at work. It had two hard drives of a whopping 40mb! Anyway, the neighbours next door had a slightly older son who explained to me how cd, copy, mkdir, del, etc. worked and he gave me a bunch of games via floppy disks. I didn't understand everything (this was before I spoke English, so no idea what the "park" command referred to or why it was important), nor knew why everything worked, or understood why some games didn't quite work when copied to the hard drive (because I didn't copy the sub folders) but I managed. Wanting to play games is a good motivator to learn any interface. Based on Sugata Mitra's experiments, I'd say as an individual I wasn't exceptional in any way; give a group of kids a computer without an artificially low ceiling and watch them go! The circumstances I was in might have been unusual at the time, but that's different. https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_... We shouldn't underestimate the abilities of children to figure out how computers work.
- keithpeter 10y agoLow floor, high ceiling activities (or low threshold, high ceiling in US) are a thing in Maths teaching as well. http://www.mathematicalresilience.org/ http://www.mathematicalresilience.org/ http://www.bowlandmaths.org.uk/ http://www.bowlandmaths.org.uk/ and http://www.bowlandmaths.org.uk/assessment/index.html http://www.bowlandmaths.org.uk/assessment/index.html Latter has example activities and sample student responses.
- glaberficken 10y agoI used to have this on a USB key for my daughter from age 2 to 5 (she is now 6). The UX was terrible, full of inconsistencies, with different icon symbols in different positions from application to application to close windows, confirm menu choices etc. But my daughter loved it to bits =) Some games are a lot of fun for a toddler. And guess what, I think the struggle she experienced with the inconsistent UI may have been the best "school" she could have had for "real world" UIs. At 6yo she is now completely autonomous navigating a Windows environment and any of the multitude of "Frankenstein" UIs I throw at her. Might even revisit it now for the 1st grade level games I remember she couldn't play back then.
- LeoPanthera 10y agoIs Edubuntu dead? No updates in over a year. https://www.edubuntu.org https://www.edubuntu.org
- cygnus 10y agoDoudou, tu viens plus aux soirées ?
- cygnus 10y agoDoudou, tu viens plus aux soirées ?
- maruhan2 10y agoPersonally i don't understand why you need a 7 and under child to use a computer. And 7 year olds pick up computer just as quickly as an adult would if they used computers for the first time
- cJ0th 10y agoProbably even quicker than an adult from my point of view. But then again, computers were much simpler in my childhood days. As an aside: It still bugs me that I don't have anymore access to this kind of fearless, joyfull learning today.
- peller 10y ago> It still bugs me that I don't have anymore access to this kind of fearless, joyfull learning today. What do you mean by this? Would something like Arduino not fall under that category in your view?
- cJ0th 10y agoWhat I mean is: If I would pick up Arduino now I'd fail to make rapid progress. Over the years it became harder and harder for me to just innocently interact with a new domain. I've acquired so many mental frameworks that clutter up my thinking. If I run into a problem nowadays I'd frequently resort to reading things up (instead of joyful playing around). And this, of course, would only happen after I spend an enormous amount of time finding the best material and so on. Or I'd wonder from time to time whether Arduino actually is something for me and think about how else I could spend my time more usefully. The reasons may sound silly but they are very real.
- peller 10y agoNah I struggle through similar reasons. I think most people do; it's hard not to when there's practically infinite access to information. For me at least, I find it's a matter of just diving in with a slight "f*ck it" attitude - if I later find out I didn't start with the "best" material, or that something doesn't interest me as much as I thought it would, I try to just cut my losses and move on. Personally, I find that "joyful learning sensation" is more a matter of mental perspective than anything else. For what it's worth :)
- winkbrace 10y agoVery nice, but my 5yr old is discovering the mouse by playing Overwatch. Such an environment is probably more required for seniors than children.
- ekianjo 10y agoIsnt overwatch a little too violent for a 5 yo?
- TulliusCicero 10y agoI don't think so, I started my son on it when he was 4. To me it doesn't seem any more violent than old Looney Tunes cartoons where people get shot in the face or blown up or anvils dropped on them. And it's adorable to watch him do Reaper's DIE DIE DIE dance.
- TulliusCicero 10y agoSame. Overwatch is a great game. Especially fun to play together! :)
- avar 10y agoAs the parent of a 1 year old, this looks great, can the content filtering be disabled, since this is a Live CD? I wonder if there's any evidence whatsoever for content filtering actually being useful for children's development, as opposed to just reinforcing societal squeamishness. The example they have[1] on their page is blocking the DuckDuck go result for "sex", whose first result is the Wikipedia article. I really can't imagine why a child who's developed enough to search for that on their own isn't ready to read about it. To the extent that the parent needs to be around to explain things to the child I don't see how that needs to be done for sex in particular, as opposed to say economics. 1. http://www.doudoulinux.org/web/english/documentation-7/advanced-tools/article/parental-controls.html http://www.doudoulinux.org/web/english/documentation-7/advan...
- rikkus 10y agoI'm certainly not letting my 2 year old on the Internet without me sitting next to her, so I'd want the filters disabled too. I am the filter.
- jbb555 10y agoI think we should define a low level learning virtual machine. Basically something like a C64 but updated to be a bit more modern. Have a virtual 4 core CPU that runs a fake machine code, have memory mapped IO so that you can put a pixel on a screen by writing a byte to memory, you can read a mouse position from a fixed memory address etc. You could make it more advanced by using the IO. We could define things like a 3d graphics interface by defining virtual registers that take commands. Pretend hardware instead of an API. Basically a fake blank computer for learning fun stuff on that's a bit more modern than an old spectrum of C64 but still (emulated) basic hardware and no layers or libraries... Perhaps if it became popular people might create the actual hardware... Hmm, I might make one :P
- qznc 10y agoLike the BBC Micro Bit, for example? https://www.microbit.co.uk/ https://www.microbit.co.uk/
- vanderZwan 10y agoPico-8 is pretty much exactly what you're talking about, including having hardware for it. http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php https://getchip.com/pages/pocketchip https://getchip.com/pages/pocketchip
- matthewhall 10y agoThis is stupid... Kids need to learn how to use a real computer. You'd be surprised how many high school juniors don't know a thing about computers.
- lucb1e 10y ago> a real computer I think this computer is about as real as they get.
- thrownblown 10y agomy 2 year old has been navigating Android for the last year no problem. YouTube kids is great if you have a Red account. No commercials. He loves my work laptop and I'm probably going to get him a Chromebook Flip when he turns three.
- urlwolf 10y agoI have a soon-to-be-4. Is touchscreen a must? I'm not sure he will be very good with mice or trackpads.
- hrabago 10y agoI have a 4 yr old. They adapt well. My kid only used to be exposed to touch screens. Her daycare then introduced them to more traditional computers with a keyboard and mouse, and they adapted fine.
- baseh 10y agoMy son just turned 4. He doesnt seem to mind using a keyboard occasionally, though searching for the keys leads to losing his interest quickly. He still finds it amusing typing words in a text editor and seeing them appear on the screen. Touchscreen seems to be easiest be it for playing games or navigating youtube. He uses google voice quite a bit on an Android smart phone, since he found the "mic" button. I have a 23-inch touch monitor hooked up to an intel nuc with Win10, which he seems to like a lot. Though the educational apps in windows store are very few. I was not able to find a way to hook up an Android variant to the touch monitor.
- spraak 10y agoAm I the outlier here? I don't see my daughter - who is 6 - using a desktop regularly enough to need a special distro.. if she is using it, it's that we are doing it together. I would like to see her have a Linux tablet though
- sdegutis 10y agoMy kids aged 4 8 9 and 12 each use the desktop every day, for recreation and for homeschool, but they use Windows 10, they each have their own user account, and they use it for various apps, including games like Minecraft and Factorio, painting programs like Photoshop and Paint.NET, beginner programming environments like Scratch and Sublime Text (for Love2d games), and more heavy programming environments like IntelliJ and Visual Studio Express. Tablets and Linux desktop distros wouldn't really make sense for us. But maybe this is an atypical setup for children?
- tyfon 10y agoMy daughter (5) got her laptop when she was 4. She is now quite proficient with the keyboard and mouse, and is able to start the computer, open minecraft, log into our lan server and build/run around. But that would not have happened if it was not for minecraft I think. They need to get interested enough.
- jonbarker 10y agoWhat does the research on computer literacy (if any) say about the appropriate time to introduce these things? I don't think a five year old will be tremendously behind. UI literacy probably comes from mapping UIs to things you are familiar with in the real world. Command line literacy comes from knowing how to read, type, and organize information.
- alan_cx 10y agoNo idea about research, but my youngest first started playing with a smart phone at about 9 months. Yes, really. After about a month he could unlock it and launch games. Soon progressed to finding YouTube videos of preschool songs for the alphabet, colours, shapes, etc. He is now 5, and can happily search google for things like mine craft hacks, which he can easily apply, and his current hobby is installing old skool operating systems on Oracle VM. His current favorite sound is the Win 95 start up sound.... He has now got a reading age of about 13, so for example he can read a broadsheet newspaper with out help, he can type anything, but is only just learning to write with a pen. But even that is now happening super quick. He started learning to write 9 months ago and had caught up with his class. Just by my experience, I'd give them devices as soon as possible, but perhaps remember to get them writing as well. Why didnt we take care of making sure he could also write? Frankly piss poor parenting on our part.
- jonbarker 10y agoThanks for the feedback. I imagine an ipad pro with the stylus could probably catch him up on that. What caused the advanced reading age in your opinion?
- jasonkostempski 10y agoIf a kid can't figure out the default WM on a system, the default WM is doing something stupid, not the kid.
- gkya 10y agoI'd refrain from letting my infant kid (I don't have one) use a computer. I've first seen one when I was 11 (about 2000) and I'm just fine with computers now. Plus, I've been able to play outside, run around, climb trees etc. It is a question of predisposition, not how early you've started with computers.
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