This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 05 Nov 2007, by Wisely.
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05 Nov 07
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Review: Linux Distribution for Children
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have addressed three Linux distributions: PCLinuxOS, Kidsafe, Edubuntu, and FreeDuc.
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PCLOS Kidsafe 0.21-beta - A nice, fast download, burned onto CD and I'm off. One of the first options I saw was whether to boot to the Live CD or into installation mode. I chose the latter as I was already familiar with PCLOS and was confident the hardware would be fine. I logged in as root because I wanted to install, but noticed that there were additional options to log in as "guest" or "kidsafe, also."
The familiar KDE desktop came up with the standard PCLOS icons along the top and a pleasant looking wheat field with a stormy sky for the wallpaper. I'll spare you the details, except to say I installed PCLOS Kidsafe in around 35 minutes, selected to delete the guest account and immediately rebooted.
I then decided to logon using the predefined "kidsafe" account instead of root. Things looked very different! Firefox opened immediately after I logged in and showed a page listing many educational and entertainment websites for kids with links to each. There were also pages giving a brief overview of this release, how to install and remaster it and contact details for the author. Very nice.
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First things first, seeing as Firefox was already on screen, I searched Google for the website address of Astalavista (hacking, cracking, exploits etc.) and "Page Blocked" was displayed. OK, on to Google images and typed a few indecent words! Again, "Page Blocked". In fact, I tried a few different things and failed to get through to any malicious website or anything porn related. I realize this is not exactly the scientific way of doing things, but with the limited time I had to test the distro, it showed a level of safety I can be comfortable with. Ad and popup blocking were not installed. Whether this would be a problem considering the presence of the filtering software remains to be seen, but I'd be more comfortable with some Firefox extensions preinstalled. I doubt it would be impossible to defeat the filtering software (DansGuardian) with perseverance, but it does give the parent some peace of mind to know that reasonable measures are already in place to help keep their child safe online. Very impressive.
Next, I checked the installed software and menu items available. I imagine it's hard to judge what to choose in a remaster like this, as the selection of software you'd install for toddlers will be vastly different from what is appropriate for school age children. From what I've seen, software applications for preschool children in Linux are fairly limited. The selection provided was fine, with text editors rather than a full word processor, a couple of applications and games specifically for preschool children, and various science and school curriculum type applications for the older ones. There were also lots of typical Linux games to keep them busy. A couple of things I'd like to see added to a future releases are media/mp3 players.
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Conspicuous by their absence are all the other standard menu items you'd normally see. Other than those menu selections mentioned, about the only thing you can do with PCLinuxOS kidsafe, configuration-wise, is alter the desktop settings. For that, I was grateful. I was able to gain access to the shell via CTRL, ALT, F1, etc. I don't know whether it is possible or even wise to lock users out of the shell completely in the event of a crashed application though, so no complaints on that point. A key combination like this is unlikely to be pressed by accident and the shell won't allow the child to cause too much havoc without the root password anyway.
I expected Linux running KDE to be quite slow on this old PC, but it runs very well. Everything was responsive and programs opened quickly. One or two titles were slow to render on screen but only because of the on board graphics and low speed of the PC components.
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this distro is aimed at younger children. The lack of an Office suite is probably testament to that.
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Children in general will be unable to do any harm to the installation if logged on to the kidsafe account, and their Internet access is as restricted as it needs to be. I really think some kind of multimedia application selection should to be added to complete this distribution. However, considering the version number for this release, I cannot fault it otherwise. It met all the requirements I was looking for, was (typical for PCLOS) very easy to install and detected and ran all the hardware correctly. Highly recommended!!
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PCLOS is the final distro of choice for me after trying many others for some months before discovering it. So, the first mini review is going to be the Kidsafe remaster of PCLOS by Brian "wizard" Burns.
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