Tinkering and fun means different things to different people. That's okay. Your idea of fun wasn't to fix the OS -- mine was. I went to the library in '97 and

Tinkering and fun means different things to different people. That's okay. Your idea of fun wasn't to fix the OS -- mine was. I went to the library in '97 and borrowed the Linux Bible, with a CD-ROM copy of Yggdrasil Plug'n'Play Linux that I installed on my 486, and the new world that opened up to me of being able to modify, tune and customize the entire OS to my liking with no restrictions was magic. Today, I work as a Linux sysadmin and I have fun at work. Other people of the same persuasion are the ones who maintain Linux distributions or contribute to the kernel today. The point here is that if a kid finds it fun and creative to futz around with "fixing the OS" then let them -- not only is it its own reward, it might lead somewhere. Don't say "no, this isn't fun in my opinion and you shouldn't have to do it".