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GCompris: high quality educational software suite for children aged 2 to 10
- hk__2 8y agoFor the context “GCompris” reads as “J’ai compris” in French, meaning “I got it” / “I understood”.
- JasonFruit 8y agoI had passively wondered. Now it'll be much easier to remember the name — thank you!
- perlgeek 8y ago... and here I was wondering why a KDE project started with G (which is used much more often for Gnome projects). Thanks!
- octachron 8y agoGCompris was originaly a GTK(Gnome) project, it migrated to Qt few years ago to make it easier to port it to tablet.
- AYBABTME 8y agoand sounds like "jay-con-pree"
- lazydon 8y agoMy seven year old absolutely loves GCompris. I would recommend GCompris by far compared to what we have on the phone apps nowdays for kids. I personally appreciate the old school non commercial spirit of the makers of the GCompris. It's one of the many goodies of sticking with Linux as my primary desktop OS.
- kej 8y agoI'm planning to set up an old laptop with Linux for my 7 and 5 year olds, so I'm curious if you have any other software suggestions in addition to GCompris?
- icarito 8y agoThere's plenty! Try `childsplay`, `pysiogame` for collections of didactic activities. Other fun individual games are `raincat`, `colobot`. Try `rabbit escape` also. For fun (we let them play as prize) try `X-moto` and `SuperTuxkart` as well as `Supertux` platformer. We only let our kids play with libre games, so that we are able to adapt the games and learn how they are made, even reuse the assets. My kids are the same age 5 and 7.
- icarito 8y agoForgot to mention `pingus` is a lemmings-alike. Good for logic, also comes with a map editor which my kids like.
- zarkov99 8y agoTuxmath was great to practice mental math with my 5 and 8 year old.
- jcl 8y agoMaybe Sugarizer? Looks like the easiest Linux install is going to be as a Chrome web app: https://github.com/llaske/sugarizer/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/llaske/sugarizer/blob/master/README.md
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoThe Sugar version of Turtle (can't remember the exact name), TuxPaint (which is also part of GCompris, but runs separately). Edubuntu has some other ideas. Scratch of course, runs well in browser now.
- bitcoinmoney 8y agoDo you know of other softwares similar to gcompris?
- imperialWicket 8y ago- childsplay https://childsplay.en.uptodown.com/ubuntu https://childsplay.en.uptodown.com/ubuntu (mentioned elsewhere) - doudou linux http://www.doudoulinux.org/web/english/index.html http://www.doudoulinux.org/web/english/index.html (an entire linux distro that wraps gcompris and includes other child-specific apps/features)
- nolroz 8y agoI really love the spirt behind gcompris and got to enjoy watching my girls play with it when they were younger. How would one get started with contributing to the project in primarily a design/art capacity?
- based2 8y agohttps://gcompris.net/wiki/Artwork_guidelines https://gcompris.net/wiki/Artwork_guidelines https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/gcompris-devel https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/gcompris-devel https://gcompris.net/wiki/Developer%27s_corner https://gcompris.net/wiki/Developer%27s_corner
- ognarb 8y agoMost of the development take place in the phabricator instance from KDE: https://phabricator.kde.org/project/view/1/ https://phabricator.kde.org/project/view/1/
- jackallis 8y agohow addicting is this? aren't we trying to avoid this? do we want our kids to glue themselves infront of a tablet all day in the name of "it's helping them? As young as 2 year olds will be now asking for tablet instead of licking the floor.
- saagarjha 8y agoIf it genuinely helps them, then why not? That’s what technology is supposed to be used for…
- sangaya 8y agoPretty sure gaining an understanding of technology is more beneficial than licking the floor. Besides, parenting allows the parents to say, "let's sit and play word games together in your tablet." My 5yo loves playing in the tablet, and it's not used as a baby sitter. Either we do it together, or she plays the simpler games (colors, letters, numbers) with her younger sister. Teaching and explaining to others is a beneficial skill as well. Being on a tablet, does not necessitate that it be antisocial.
- avip 8y agoI'll put it blatantly, without citation, and accept the downvotes with love: do not give your 2yo anything that has a screen. Just say no. And yes - licking the floor is order of magnitude healthier for them.
- em-bee 8y agothe only time our 1 year old gets to see the phone screen is on video calls with family and friends
- EvanAnderson 8y agoIt's anecdote, to be sure, but I credit our 5 1/2 y/o daughter's ability to be amused and contented with books, imaginative play, and art (as compared to her cousins and classmates) to our having nearly completely disallowed "screens" in her life. (We even go so far as to plan restaurant seating to keep her back to TVs after we saw her "veg out" when a TV was in her sight line once.) In the last year we've let her watch some YouTube cooking videos in a supervised setting, and she and I have started working thru some educational titles on my old Apple IIgs. We've tried very hard to avoid "twitch" stimulus, if only because I have an unscientific belief that such stimulus "dulls" ones' sense of novelty. (I know that I find myself struggling to deal with "slower" movies and video games that I enjoyed when I was younger.)
- mxuribe 8y agoI used to love watching my kid play with the various games in GCompris!
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago"Find the sepia butterfly"???
- johnwyles 8y agoYeah, that got me too. I was looking for the butterfly with a cowboy hat sitting on a bail of hay with a "Butterfly Saloon" sign behind them.
- ivan_ah 8y agoVery nice. Looking at the source code http://gcompris.net/download/qt/src/gcompris-qt-0.95.tar.xz http://gcompris.net/download/qt/src/gcompris-qt-0.95.tar.xz I saw the tech stack is based on QT, so works cross platform. Very nice suite with each game described by concise format, e.g. addition activity is a 6-line file: import "../../core" import "../algebra_by/" Algebra { onStart: { operand.text = "+" } } and metadata here gcompris-qt-0.95/src/activities/algebra_plus/ActivityInfo.qml ActivityInfo { name: "algebra_plus/AlgebraPlus.qml" difficulty: 3 icon: "algebra_plus/algebra_plus.svg" author: "Bruno Coudoin <bruno.coudoin@gcompris.net>" title: qsTr("Addition of numbers") ... Interestingly in the case of Algebra, there seems to be some of the logic running in .js files. I didn't you you can have .js code in QT apps. Very cool! We normally assume to make an app truly cross-platform and reusable we have to use web technology, but this is a good example of a civilized GUI framework helping achieve something super clear and cross-platform.
- ognarb 8y agoIf you are interested in qt quick app development, look at the kirigami [1] framework. Make it really easy to create convergent app. [1] https://www.kde.org/products/kirigami/ https://www.kde.org/products/kirigami/
- sbuttgereit 8y agoActually, as part of my consultancy, I make a fairly substantial income from doing development work with the older (and technically deprecated) Qt scripting framework QtScript (https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtscript-index.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtscript-index.html), which is really just an ancient version of standard ECMAScript with Qt'isms and hooks added. I do ERP work and the ERP that I've been working with is Qt based and is extensible via QtScript. While I'd prefer to be 1) using a different scripting language, and 2) at least a more modern JavaScript flavor, given the nature of COTS ERP software I'll probably see a fair amount of work here for quite some time, albeit niche. The big problem I have these days is finding people sufficiently knowledgeable and willing to take overflow as projects exceed my availability. Old, obscure ECMAScript variants that aren't web focused aren't the draw they once were ;-) .... kinda feels like a less legit version of COBOL... but pays enough to keep me engaged with it.
- johnwyles 8y agoI remember finding this project years ago and it is indeed much more flushed out than when I checked it out then. However, and I recognize this is begging disdain from Linux purists, I wonder if their are any React projects with a similar goal, target audience, or set of features/games? I feel like there would a more vibrant contributing community releasing a richer set of unforeseen features, challenges, games, etc. I am not a huge fan of React, electron, etc versus native apps personally myself but I cannot dismiss the very active and large community and for a project like this I feel like there could be a great benefit. I suppose when someone writes most of these apps for kids they are charging for it in the App Store and that is where a project like I am envisioning quickly falls short. Thoughts?
- simion314 8y agoI think a react project will have more issues like: - the package dependencies, packages get often deprecated on npm and in rare occasion contained malware, Qt contains most things you need and a web view if you need to show html or run JS for some reason - GCompris is an old project and it had one big rewrite to Qt in latest years, using Web tech they would be forced to keep up with the web frameworks, imagine you will have to rebuild your current web project in 10 years from now and continue working on it - I think a port to web tech would have negative effect on the battery life of the devices On the upsides you could have the web port running in a browser, though having something that works without internet is a big plus, there must be similar projects or collection of different web projects somewhere but others mentioned Windows and mobile devs will think how to make money in the app stores maybe with some ads.
- mccada 8y agoOn a similar note, any good mobile educational apps for kids? I found Khan Academy Kids which is quite polished and nice.
- roel_v 8y agoEdoki 'Montessori Preschool' & 'Code carts'. And their other apps.
- la6470 8y agoWhy the hell you make it GNU public license and then charge for it? Change he license or make it completely free.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoI got annoyed by the kooky voices used for the English version, heavily accented and way over the top "way to go!" -- it selects a "good" response seemingly at random from a list, so when other apps might go "ding" for minor encouragement this goes "congratulations!". Also it ascribes to "never say anything is wrong" which means instead of "wrong" it says "check answer" which doesn't always fit (eg if you miss getting a ball in a "goal"). I did look at providing new sound files but was suprised to find they weren't just wav/mp3/whatever in a folder. I like some of the games; I seem to recall it's highly configurable.
- partycoder 8y agoSeems nice except for the developer art. Kids are exposed to very high quality material these days.
- kyleperik 8y agoI actually played this when I was a kid. I remember really enjoying it. Now I'm a computer programmer and I won't use any OS other than Linux.
- seabird 8y agoI have a lot of fond memories and appreciation attached to software like this. I only realized that when I spoke with somebody who made a point that's stuck with me for years now; when he was young, his dad installed something comparable to GCompris on the family computer, and although he only has faint memories of it, he remembered activities of simply clicking balloons to pop them, and typing simple words. Only when he was a teenager did it truly make sense to him why his dad installed the software, or why anybody had thought to make it; simply using a mouse and keyboard came to him from those early childhood experiences that he could barely remember, and the revelation came when he saw people his age struggle with basic computer input. He would eventually move on to Starcraft scripting, and then to video game modifications, and then to a career in programming, but all of that was enabled by just popping a balloon on a screen. Plenty of people can use a computer, and click things, and type things on a keyboard, but ever since hearing that anecdote, I realized how many people are just "getting by" in that department. Since my early childhood, I could count my daily misclicks on one hand, but that doesn't seem to be the reality for most people. Thinking about it, a Sesame Street game that I have very little recollection of could be a huge part of how I use a computer today, and that thought makes me hugely appreciate what programs like GCompris do.
- sytelus 8y agoI paid $9.99 on Windows store and it says I "own" the app but when I start GCompris it still says I must buy full version!