[H-GEN] HEADS UP: Debian for Kids

[Anthony Towns]

On Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 09:12:23AM +1000, David Findlay wrote:
> How hard would it be to make a special version of Debian Linux designed just 
> for kids? Like with customised packages, set up to be easy to use, games for 
> linuxforkids.org etc. AJ: Do you reckon the Debian management would allow 
> something like that as part of the Debian project, or would it have to be a 
> separate thing?

There's a "Debian Junior" project aimed at doing this; the mailing list will
be either debian-jr at lists.debian.org or debian-junior at lists.debian.org, I
forget exactly. Haven't heard anything much out of them recently though.

How hard it'd be depends on what you want to do exactly. Do you just
want to setup a machine that you can give to a kid and have them use
it happily? If so, it doesn't much what the admin interface is, so you
can just use the regular Debian distribution and do some scripting to
make sure the right packages get downloaded and they get configured
correctly. That'd require a lot of care, but wouldn't require much in
depth hacking. OTOH, if you want to make it so any parent can pull an old
computer out of their cupboard, or free up some space on their current
computer, and buy a CD from you and get a machine that's suitable for
their kids to mess around with, that's going to be a lot harder.

> Big thing is though it needs to be able to fit in a minimum of a 300Mb hard 
> drive. See my earlier post about PC's for Kids. We need to stand up and help 
> these people make the transition to Linux. I'll be at the next HUMBUG meeting 
> if anyone wants to help. 

That's possible, but it won't be easy to make it fit in that and be
particularly attractive too.

> As far as I can see, it is just a matter of loading the base packages, then 
> customising all the rest, like getting rid of servers, preconfiguring 
> packages to work out of the box, etc. How long would it take to make a 
> customised version like this, with a custom easier-to-use installer?

If you want to make a custom installer, it'll take quite a while. The
installer is the absolute hardest part of Debian to work on, especially if
you want it to work with J. Random Old and Cheap Computer. You might have
better luck with the Corel or Storm Linux installers.

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj at humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

``_Any_ increase in interface difficulty, in exchange for a benefit you
  do not understand, cannot perceive, or don't care about, is too much.''
                      -- John S. Novak, III (The Humblest Man on the Net)
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