Comment by bbbhltz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bbbhltz | Hacker News Reader

We were gifted our old work laptops. My partner and I work for the same place. She gave hers to the mother in law after I wiped Windows and put Linux on it.

I gave mine to my son. I figured that my son might want to use the touch screen I went with Gnome because it seemed a little more touch friendly. I told myself it doesn't matter because he is 8 and I can always reinstall.

I chose Debian (Stable) so I wouldn't have to deal with keeping it updated, put a root password to prevent them from going crazy with installing stuff.

I will have to put Scratch on it someday, for the moment he cares about the following:

- the LEGO website to look at instructions - the music player to listen to soundtracks from his favourite games - MyPaint for making drawings

He is starting to figure out the idea of folders, deleting things, undo, etc., but hasn't asked for any other software or even games yet.

I am a professor and would like for my son to learn about word processors, spreadsheets, programming, etc.. If he ever asks, I will give him the root password and let him browse the repos. Right now, I'm just happy to see him enjoy it without doing what lots of his friends do: sit in front of YouTube all afternoon.

I recently installed Ubuntu on a little Geekom mini PC for my 6 and 8 year olds to share. So far my 6 yo isn’t too into it, but her older sister mostly uses it for the games I’ve put onto it through Epic and Steam and programming using MakeCode, mostly for Arcade (https://arcade.makecode.com) (I have a couple of micro:bit-based handheld shields) and more recently getting into the awesomely simple networking that the micro:bit provides (https://makecode.microbit.org).

Since the micro:bit requires some file management for programming them, that’s been a good entry point to the file system.

how do you manage parentcontrol on YT?

You ban it. It's mental cancer, to both adults and children. And I'm not even being hyperbolic.

Even the kid-safe stuff is so incredibly viral and empty, it kills all creativity and volition.

I’d agree with deferring any and all social media as long as you can get away with.

On the YT front a small thing that helps is an extension that removes all recommendations. So YouTube opens to a blank screen with only search and after watching a video there’s no now shady this. So it becomes much more functional to their interests.

“How to _____” “Explain how ____ works.”

Helps reduce the addictive parts and keep the “it’s a tool” parts in focus.

Yeah, Youtube for my six year old son is restricted to us looking up stuff for him to watch. Want to know how pencils are made? We'll look up a good video. Recently, that's not often either.

CocoMelon and its ilk on Youtube are abhorrent. It's digital crack tailored to absorb every little bit of attention. Avoid that shit.

There is a lot of good stuff on it too, including a lot of educational stuff.

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