Awesome question. And good advice here. To add something: Don’t just give them games. Hook up an old printer, install LibreOffice plus the openclipart images. Kids can make everything into a game. We used to play with my dad’s old pc and imagined being private investigators and had our own little office. We printed out lots of silly stuff and took notes on the computer. There are a few ‘learn typing on a keyboard’ games, but back then I didn’t have fun with them.
Maybe they like drawing, install TuxPaint, Krita. Or video editing or recording stuff, give them a webcam/phone and Kdenlive. Have them do a spoof on a movie or do their own Lego stop-motion film. Or they like to make music, install Audacity’s sucessor, LMMS, a drum sequencer …
And of course the whole kids-education metapackage if your distribution has one. So they can program little turtles and start coding with Python. You can do this at age 8, depending on the kids personality.
It works best if it’s tied somehow into their lives. For example (occasionally) printing homework assignments, a stop-motion suite if they play a lot with Lego anyways…
Other than that, my boy scout education tells me to “look at the boy”. Have them explore and see that they like. Assist and teach them how to operate the software they want to use. Help them once they get stuck or can’t figure something out on their own. You will have to guide them and show how they can achieve the results they want, so they stay motivated.
Give them background knowledge and tell them the 'why’s. Why something is the way it is. I’d say that is the point where we get to Linux. At age 10 or so, you don’t necessarily care about an operating system. But you’re curious and happy to learn why there are different ones and why they behave differently and the story behind that. And the thing that hooks you is the possibilities and usefulness for your life. So that’s why I recommend installing lots of useful (to kids) software.
And maybe give them a chat / instant-messenger program. So they can contact you and ask questions.
As it is with teaching generally, it heavily depends on how you do it. Kids are very curious by default. In my experience: “Look at the boy” has served me well. Kids come in a wide variety. Don’t teach them top-down but find a mix of letting them explore and roam, but also make sure to teach them the basics first. And guide them how to apply things to their life and find use-cases and the fun in it. If you pay attention to them, you can adjust your own behaviour.
This is also how I got hooked to computers as a kid as well. The problem nowadays though is the internet and easy access to addictive internet services and games. Back then, you’re stuck with what’s on your PC and somehow have to make the most out of it.
Mmh. Sure, I don’t have kids so I probably lack some experience in how it is today.
I’m not sure if trying to compete with the attention-grabbing games is what whe should aim for. Sure kids love Roblox and Minecraft, and watching lets-play videos for days on end…
But there is no educational aspect in just giving them all the games. And they won’t become invested in the underlying concepts and the world of free software and computers if all you do is replicate a gaming pc and provide them with a flawless Steam/Proton experience. The computer as a tool and the operating system is irrelevant for just gaming. And it isn’t (in my eyes) what makes computers and Linux appealing.
I wouldn’t even attempt to compete with that. Sure, give them SuperTuxKart, PPracer and maybe a Minetest world (with mods and animals and NPCs so the world isn’t just the empty and boring default one).
I don’t really know how to pry a modern child out of games and videos. Maybe restrict their time with that. Show them alternatives and how to use the computer as a tool. Start a project together with them. Maybe design a calender as a gift for someone, or get them started with the stop-motion movie, or music studio. You could also (dis)assemble the PC together with them and install Linux so they learn about the components. Unfortunately this all really requires time, attention and dedication from the adult and I see no way around that. And the child also needs to become interested in that aspect. But you need to start somewhere. I would really try to advertise this as something more than an alternative gaming platform and make some sort of distinction between the two.
[I know how it was back them with old computers and without the internet. We had a super old, decommissioned PC from my dad. The choice of games was somewhat limited and we had to become innovative. I learned programming relatively early, because Commander Keen or the old flight simulator wasn’t as enticing as the modern games are and you got bored after a few days. With some games we got stuck or some were pirated and in English, which i didn’t speak back then. So I definitely did a good amount of gaming, even back then. But we weren’t allowed to do it indefinitely and we also sat in front of the PC with friends and took turns. I suppose this is different now that everyone has their own Nintendo Switch. The world has changed since and trying to go back isn’t the right thing to do. But I believe the underlying concepts, trying to do more than just gaming and passive entertainment, restricting their access to it and provide them with alternatives, if you got the time to spare, is a good thing.]
(Apart from that, I’ve been with the boy scouts for quite some time. We always did some projects in the rainy autumn and winter. Even the roblox-kids from today like to do other things like hands-on projects, handicraft work to carpentry. But you have to find a way to reach them. Once they managed to get some nice results, it becomes easier and they become invested themselves.)
Probably to play games, access the internet and maybe do their homework. Most probably, they don’t use Windows because they specifically enjoy working with Windows, but because it easily lets them do whatever they actually want to do on a PC.
Spending 5h on fixing some weird incompatibility between the Nvidia GPU, your DE and Proton might be fun for some, but it’s most probably not what your kid wants to do when they could be gaming or doing whatever they actually want to do. Problems like that can scare them off quickly.
So first setup the PC so that everything they usually do on Windows works without issues.
The next question is, why would your kid want to run Linux instead of Windows?
The usual advantages (FOSS, free to use, better for developers) don’t really matter to most kids. The only things I can think of right now are:
Runs on PCs that aren’t Win11 compatible
Some games like Minecraft run faster (but some games also run slower)
With the setup completed and advantages thought of, you can let the kid use Linux quite similarly to Windows. When the kid wants new software or has an issue, work together with them to get everything running. First do everything and let them watch, later let them do more and more of the process.
My favourite “lesson” I ever gave was in a grade 9 technology class. It was a pretty small class, about 10 kids. I split them up into two teams and made a competition. They chose their own teams — it ended up being boys vs girls. I never would have made it that way on my own but that’s how it worked out.
The school had a bunch of old, decommissioned PCs that were headed to the junk yard. I sorted through all of them to get two exact sets of working parts for the competition.
The goal of the competition was to recover a jpeg from one of the hard drives. Each team had a computer with the ram removed and two hard drives. One was blank and the other had the jpeg on it. They also had a Linux Mint installer on a usb stick.
I don’t remember exactly how I had set it up but it was points based, something about getting to different stages first. Like 5 points to be the team that turns the computer on first. One of the big ones was that they got an extra 10 points if they did the whole thing without a mouse.
I told the other classes about the competition and asked some other teachers if it would be okay for them to watch and cheer on. It ended up being the nerdiest and most exciting class ever. Students were literally cheering each team through a Linux install. One team got stuck and had to pull out the mouse. There was booing. It was so epic.
The girls won, being the first to recover the jpeg and they did it all without a mouse. It was so awesome. The jpeg was the meme about how would a dog wear pants.
It was about 5 years ago, my first year teaching. I really miss those days. I only teach math now, and while I like that, there was something magical about showing kids how fun computers can be.
@maxprime@nayminlwin what an amazing story. I love that this could be gamified for them and made more fun. I presume you had a guide or helped them when they got stuck?
I had some of my classes (14-15yr olds) assemble their own computers as the first class. It was cheap junk anyway, and I was willing to risk it, but it set the stage for the year. I dont think I got them to install system on it (whole school run on Linux btw), thats a great touch. And making it into something that entertaining, and stereotypes breaking is brilliant!
If i were to become a teacher in the future (unlikely, but not impossible), i'd hope to be just as caring and enjoying the craft as you are. Keep it up! ☺️
Out of curiosity, how much had you already taught them about the tasks? Was it just expected that between the whole team there would be someone who knew this stuff?
If I recall correctly I didn’t tell them much about anything. One of them had a nerd dad who set up his daughter with Linux at home but she wasn’t familiar with the install process. I gave them some basic info when I gave them the rules (you have to connect the hard drives and ram) but for the most part everything was new to them.
On the other hand, I also ran a computer club with some other kids (in a younger grade) where we took that pile of broken computers and salvaged working parts. We ended up with 3 or 4 working pcs that we ran Linux mint on. They used the computers for Roblox or something at lunch lol. The computers ended up being a popular attraction at lunch!
@maxprime my technology teacher in middle school did something similar with me and a bunch of other kids in 1995 or so. That's how I fixed my first pc, and eventually started a career in IT. There was no team competition, but he basicallt said "these are some broken computers, if you can fix them you can have a lab to play Doom or whatever you want. He helped us setting up the IPX network tbf, but we had to check what dimm banks were working, which not, same with hdd and processors, and put togheter everything and install Windows 3.11
Yeah I had formatted and partitioned the disk ahead of time. The JPEG was in the root directory IIRC. I warned them to not plug in both hard drives during the install process to be sure not to overwrite the wrong drive. They were labelled physically but were otherwise identical.
You can only teach someone Linux if they have a desire to learn it. If they don’t want to learn it, then they might learn that it’s “bad” or “weird” compared to mainstream OSes, which would be working backwards.
A friend of mine got his son to use Linux by just not providing an alternative, he installed Debian edu (don’t know if that’s the name, but basically a Debian spin for kids with parental restrictions and stuff) on an old laptop for him and that’s what he used. Once he got his own PC it was over though since he wanted to play Fortnite so bad that he bought windows for that. He still dual boots Fedora, but I don’t think he has used it since the windows partition is there.
I think the thing is you can’t really get kids (or people in general for that matter) into Linux the way you are probably into it and interested in it. At least not if they’re not already interested in it on their own. They will learn how to use it sure, but not the way we’re used to using Linux, understanding the intricacies of the system, keeping the system safe,… They’ll probably find a way to do what they already do on windows and ignore that the OS is different.
IMO, his aproach was too strict, that’s why it failed and just caused repulsion towards Linux. There are other ways you can “make” children like things.
I don’t think this was too strict, maybe I made it sound that way, but it was not like he forbid him using windows, it was just that he’s using Linux, his son got his old laptop that was running Linux and they didn’t have a windows license, so his son was running Linux as well. He’s also doing fine on Linux and doesn’t dislike it or anything, the only “problem” was that he wanted to play Fortnite which does not work on Linux. He’s also getting along fine with Linux, especially on fedora where he doesn’t need the Terminal.
What I wanted to say with that comment is that you can’t make your kids to learn and use Linux like most of us probably do. For most people an operating system is still just some black magic on their computer that makes the browser or their games run, they don’t care how it works or if it is secure or using the latest software. Most people just don’t know and don’t care what an OS even is and the same thing goes for kids imo
Oh, that’s different then… I thought his dad was like “run Debian, or you’re grounded”, lol 😂.
I agree on the last part, that is most definitely true. You can try, but you can’t force it 🤷. After all, his/hers gifts may lay in another field, not tech 😉.
Yep, this is good as well. Use whatever suits the needs best, but I’d try and get him leaning towards the FOSS side - use other OSes only if you have to.
His screen time is currently limited and he’s been asking me to remove the limit. Guess I can let him dual boot into Mint without any screen time limit so that he can play around.
„hey son! I hardened the parental controls on your windows install. And by the way, I installed Linux to your PC as well. It has no parental controls.“
I taught adult education in college and always introduced people to computing with “DOS for Dummies” even though Windows was the OS they interacted with. By teaching them in a command line only environment first I could then easily teach them the desktop environment because they understood what was going on behind the scenes. I think the same could be done with Linux.
Yeah, but the kid has to be older, 12 is too young for that IMO.
Still, a Linux install with a DE will do nicely. He wants to do this and this, but there is no GUI for it, tell him to open up the terminal and type in the following commands, see what happens after you hit Enter… it always brings a smile, even with adults ☺️, they feel like they’re hackers or something 😂.
Then they usually wanna know what each of the commands and options do, and this is where I know I have a great student ☺️.
I just started them on Linux machines from the get go. The same reason I got good at 3.1/95/98 was to setup games, filesharing, and getting hardware to work for better games. Even with Steam, there’s always some work to handle oddities. The kids are rapidly becoming reasonable basic admins the same way I did. Whether they decide to go further and learn more will be up to them.
All too much of OS config, IT work, and troubleshooting is a combination of reading docs, trying things, and plenty of online searches. The big missing piece is motivation. That’s why I learned as a kid. It was all about building systems to play games.
For your kids, a combination of showing the basics, how to find out how to fix things, giving them agency to modify the OS (assume you’ll need to reinstall sometime), and a purpose could get them going. Not everyone find the motivation and interest, but kids are often more able to invest and explore than we give them credit for. I found my son (at age 13) at installed the proprietary NVidia driver for his laptop without my knowing. He just started following tutorials until it worked. Proud dad moment, time for ice cream, and then he went back to playing games with his buddies.
That’s a good start. Also, include him in your own PC activities (some of them, make some up if you don’t have anything that he can be involved in at the time), like “I need to find a cool new background, I was thinking this and this might be cool, could you help me find something online?”. It gives kids a sense of being useful and wanted, plus a pat on the back, high 5 or something like that when the task is done. And it might inspire him to look for his own background, something he identifies with 😉.
Have a lot smaller kid, he’s 4, but this is just something from the top of my head… or how I would play it.
It was hard for me at first, grasping how to bring up and educate him… it didn’t come naturally for me. But my mom was a lot of help, she gave me a lot of pointers and I just started building on that 😉.
Just introducing them to it is probably enough. Show them different desktop environments and applications to get them used to the idea of diverse interfaces and workflows. Just knowing that alternatives exist could help them break out of the Windows monoculture later. Enable all of the cool window effects.
The only advice I have is to try to make it interesting for them and not just additional practical information they have to memorize. You don’t want to be the weird dad that insists on using stuff nobody else does, you have to show them what’s cool about it, and also accept maybe they’ll just stick with Windows for now.
I also think the main takeaway they should have out of it is that there’s many ways of doing the same thing and none is “the correct and only way”. They should learn to think critically, navigate unfamiliar user interfaces, learn some more general concepts and connect the dots on how things work, and that computers are logical machines, they don’t just do random things because they’re weird. Teach them the value of being able to dig into how it works even if it doesn’t necessarily benefit them immediately.
Maybe set up a computer or VM with all sorts of WMs and DEs with the express permission to wreck it if they want, or a VM they can set up (even better if they learn they can make their own VMs as well!). Probably have some games on there as well. Maybe tour some old operating systems for the historical context of how we got where we are today. Show them how you can make the computers do things via a terminal and it does the same thing as in the GUI. Show different GUIs, different file managers, different text/document editors, maybe different DE’s, maybe even tiling vs floating. What is a file, how are ways you can organize them, how you can move them around, how some programs can open other program’s files.
Teach them the computer works for them not the other way around. They can make the computer do literally anything they want if they wish so. But it’s okay to use other people’s stuff too.
But when the time comes and the kid needs to write some assignments for school, you can be like Your Steam Deck can do that too, have a look at what this dock does
Imagine if handheld gaming is all they’ve ever used it and known it for, and all of a sudden you show them than it can be a full desktop experience, too
I love Linux gaming. Got the Steam deck for my SO. She kind of hates it BECAUSE it’s not a no tinker device.
Like if you pick the right games you’re good, but want to play the “wrong” game, or want to mod, and your back to tinkering.
I don’t mind it at all, it’s just what PC gaming has been for me my whole life, but for her, someone who only experienced gaming on newer consoles it’s a pain in the tush.
For me what planted the Linux seed is when I tried Mandrake Linux when I was 9-10ish. I didn’t end up sticking with it for all that long, but I absolutely loved trying out all those DEs. I had downloaded the full fat 5 CD version and checked almost everything during setup, so it came jam packed with all sorts of random software to try out. The games were nice, played the shit out of Frozen Bubble. I really liked Konqueror too, coming from Internet Explorer. It was pretty snappy overall. And there’s virtual desktops for more space! People were really helpful on IRC, even though I was asking about installing my Windows drivers in Wine. Unfortunately I kinda wanted games and my friends were getting annoyed we couldn’t play games on my computer.
It stuck with me however, so later on when some of my online friends were trying it out, I wanted to try it out again too. I wasn’t much into games anymore, had started coding a little bit. So on my computer went Kubuntu 7.10, and I’m still on Linux to this day.
But that seed is what taught me there’s more. I didn’t hate Windows, I wasn’t looking to replace it. I hadn’t fallen in love with FOSS yet. It was cool and different and fun. It wasn’t as sterile and as… grey as Windows 98. You could pop up some googly eyes that followed your mouse, because you could. There were all those weird DEs with all sorts of bars and features.
You don’t want to be the weird dad that insists on using stuff nobody else does, you have to show them what’s cool about it, and also accept maybe they’ll just stick with Windows for now.
This 👆. Be weird, but be cool at the same time. None of the other dads can do this, but yours can 🦸 ☺️… and, he can teach you how to do a lot more cool stuff as well 😉.
I also think the main takeaway they should have out of it is that there’s many ways of doing the same thing and none is “the correct and only way”. They should learn to think critically, navigate unfamiliar user interfaces, learn some more general concepts and connect the dots on how things work, and that computers are logical machines, they don’t just do random things because they’re weird. Teach them the value of being able to dig into how it works even if it doesn’t necessarily benefit them immediately.
This will come gradually. First, show him one way of doing things, let it sink in, let him get comfortable with it, then say “you know, you could do that in another way as well 😉”. I bet he’ll start asking you if there are other ways as well in no time 😂.
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