energymedia Posted April 8, 2004 Report Share Posted April 8, 2004 Good article regarding a 4 year old using Linux. http://software.newsforge.com/software/04/...2/1424206.shtml Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghil Vertefeuille Posted April 8, 2004 Report Share Posted April 8, 2004 cool :D I read a story a year ago, when it was a 7 years old girl who was in the same position. When she came to school and played with windows, she said something like: "I can't do anything with that, thi is all weird and difficult..." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mystified Posted April 8, 2004 Report Share Posted April 8, 2004 Great article. I've managed to get one of my daughters to switch to linux. After using windows for quite some time she had no problem making the transition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland Posted April 8, 2004 Report Share Posted April 8, 2004 Nothing new for me. my son is 5 and use linux since he is 4. Well, not really use it, play with it is more accurate. Play games, but also he likes to put a mess in his /home. He likes to change the color of the desktop's background and throw all the icons in the bin. M$ Win or Linux he don't care. Me I do care: I would never let him play alone on Win98 In fact it's the same with my 2 daughters: 10 and 11. They have all there very, but very secret password for there /home and all like to mess with it even more than there room :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brkville42NY Posted April 8, 2004 Report Share Posted April 8, 2004 oh my gosh a toddler can use this but not me???? i feel so dumb now... but i'ma put on some Linkin Park and rock out. i feel betta. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghil Vertefeuille Posted April 8, 2004 Report Share Posted April 8, 2004 well it's just a matter of time before you do, with our help ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted April 8, 2004 Report Share Posted April 8, 2004 The article is superb! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Padma Posted April 8, 2004 Report Share Posted April 8, 2004 The other day I was "relaxing" with TuxRacer, and my 6-yr-old grandson came over and said, "Wow! Cool! Make him go faster!" He doesn't care about the OS. He just knows "Point and Click" makes things go. He'll have no trouble using Linux, I'm sure. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted April 9, 2004 Report Share Posted April 9, 2004 Well, what the article basically shows is that people who have no knowledge of computers whatsoever will have the same difficulty learning whatever OS you teach them. It is when they CHANGE from one to another where the trouble starts. For all I know, if you teach a 4 year old something obscure or obsolete like DOS or Apple II (as long as it has graphics) s/he can pick it up as easy as a more popular OS like WinXP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arthur Posted April 9, 2004 Report Share Posted April 9, 2004 I started playing around with my parent's computers when I was 8 or 9. I loved the bright colors of the BIOS, which of course was screaming warnings I didn't heed. :lol: By the time I was 11 I could load the CDROM driver into DOS by editing config.sys and autoexec.bat using any drive letter I wanted. I could even specify memory addresses for the TSRs. :D By the time Win 95 came about it was a piece of cake. 'Aint that hard you know. There's even an essay on why CLI can be newbie friendly, here: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6282 ps. sorry about all that bragging :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted April 9, 2004 Report Share Posted April 9, 2004 far be it from me to be the old fuddy_duddy :D but umm....when people say 'linux is hard' they're not talking about point and click stuff like opening and playing a game or opening an editor>typing>and saving a file. Of course any child can do that.....adults? Well, they should write articles that actually say something of value. Something that shows that linux is easy to install>config>maintain for a windows/mac convert willing to learn just a little. JMO. My 6 and 3 year old play around in linux just like they do in win. No diff....no biggy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted April 9, 2004 Report Share Posted April 9, 2004 All computers are hard to really manage, and if set up properly, quite easy to use. I'd say that all computers are too hard to manage for the 'average user' - the one they always claim linux isn't ready for. Guess what, this person is not ready for computers anyway. As for toddlers using computers, sure, why not. But only if set up properly and instructed how to do some things, shown the concepts (in toddler appropriate ways). This is actually why it will be easier to teach a toddler to use some OS with GUI than to get some experienced user (not admin or so) to use linux if they are used to something else. People don't learn concepts, especially in the windows world - they learn exact usage. Click the "W" icon to start Word. They don't know that word is a wordprocessor, nor that IE is a webbrowser. Alternatives of IE would be IE4.0, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0 etc.... I have some colleagues who use windows a lot, most of them who are on broadband spend an hour or so per week to make sure their machines are safe for 'the dangerous web'... They don't have virus problems, but it costs them a lot of time. My server has an uptime of 70+ days today, no worries no problems, and I think that in total I invested less time to learn linux the way I know it than they did to learn windows the way they know it. And, I believe that I know more about linux than they do about windows.... Ah well - I will soon install linux at work (as soon as they get me the hd that they promised to install it on), then start pushing desktop linux at work. No toddlers there, just loads of engineers used to Unix and who don't really appreciate MS/Win... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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