Comment by kjellsbells | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kjellsbells | Hacker News Reader

There are both practical and philosophical aspects to this. Practically, you might want a somewhat locked down solution with the root account locked and the ability to wipe and reinstall remotely. Are you and your friend up for that? If kiddo barfs the system (they're kids, they will, and it's ok!) your friend is gonna need to be up and running quick. PXE boot, kickstart, recovery USB stick, etc.

Before investing time you might also get a several distros on live USB sticks, boot each one up with the kid and parent, and see which one they like best before you install it. Make the kid part of the process.

Depending on the age of the child, make the computer discoverable. The full app store might be too much for younger children (mummy what's a flatpak?) But you might preload a "basic" and an "intermediate" app, eg Minecraft and scratch and then a (simple!!) Python IDE. And put them in discoverable, kid friendly places on the start menu.

Games. Lots of games. Both for their fun value and for teaching the motor skills of mouse and keyboard. Curiosity apps like Google earth.

For older kids, compatibility with their friends is important so make sure that things like LibreOffice, chat etc Just Work. No 13 year old wants to be the Odd Kid with the Bizarro Parent Computer. You can involve them in thinking about what it means to have choice in computing and to not just be a consumer, but they're still kids facing natural social pressures.

I could go on all day. One last point. After the thing is all set up and has been running for a few weeks, check in with the child and parent. What do they like? What do they not? And fix those issues.

> The full app store might be too much for younger children (mummy what's a flatpak?)

More to the point, they won't know what to look for, or might decide on something inappropriate (or even just unexpectedly hard to use).

> eg Minecraft and scratch and then a (simple!!) Python IDE.

If the kid is interested in and ready for creating a program by actually typing in text, a plain text editor (that can be Xed or Kate or whatever) plus the command line will probably serve better. The simplest functional IDE is really the built-in IDLE, and it's IMX not pleasant to use by comparison. The built-in command-line REPL, on the other hand, improved substantially in 3.13.

mu editor looks pretty good for kids to learn python. unfortunately it is no longer supported.

thonny is an ok replacement, but doesn't feel as kid friendly to me.

I had a long debate whether a graphical programming environment like Scratch was better than typing out a classical language such as Python, my friends sided with Scratch but I ended up teaching (a bunch of 11-year-olds in a school) Python using the pyturtle library for simple graphics.

The advantage of Python includes being a "real" language - you can literally make money with what you learn. Also, the program as textual artifact means in can be read out and discussed.

[Python is great; my comment is only within block-based languages] For those actively teaching¹, consider Snap! (https://snap.berkeley.edu/) over/after Scratch. It's nearly a superset, similarly "low-floor" but much "higher ceiling" powerful language.

Data structures, control structures/message passing, functional programming... It's really "Scheme in Scratch clothing" under the hood.

In particular, its "build your own blocks" facilities are powerful enough (including macros i.e. custom control structures receiving "body" arguments as unevaluated lambdas) for you to build any scaffolding they need to focus on concepts you want them to learn at this stage.

¹If you don't have much time to sit with them, Scratch may win on "go find tutorials on youtube".

> More to the point, they won't know what to look for, or might decide on something inappropriate (or even just unexpectedly hard to use).

Why does it matter. They try something out, it doesn't work, they try something different out next time. A child learning on it's own always works like that. They try random things out and see what works.

My parents gave an RPi and I had root, because I needed to install it myself. I broke it a few times, but why is that a bad thing? It's not like I could destroy anything important.

without root, how can they mess up the system?

at worst they can mess up their account. then set up a new one. i don't see a situation where you would need to reinstall remotely.

don't let them choose distros. use the same distro you have, or one that you are comfortable supporting. everything else will make it harder for you to help them.

Well, they can mess up the filesystem, eg corrupting it via shenanigans with the power, or nuke their home directory, config, etc. Enough that the next boot doesn't just work and get them back to where they were. Uncommon, but very possible.

Re the distro, I think that you should aim to minimize the "irrelevant" cognitive load on the kid and make them feel ownership of their environment. So yeah, I would rather learn how to help them do things in Zorin knowing that they chose it because they liked the colors than ram stock Ubuntu or god forbid Arch down their throat because it's what I or their parent ran. There'll be plenty of time for that once you know they are into it. And no harm done if they aren't.

sure, if you run something that is aimed at experienced users like arch then that's probably not a wise choice. but for example as a fedora desktop user i'd recommend something fedora based, because it will drastically reduce the troubleshooting efforts compared to something debian based.

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