this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Any one here has any experience with teaching 8 to 12 years old kids Linux?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

You can go with a little escape game, just put vim in Fullscreen and reward the first child getting out.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

We did some MIT's scratch together. I'll give it a try as well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm teaching my son to be pc agnostic.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Just sit them down with it. Kids can figure new technology out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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 ☺️.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

They like playing SuperTux

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's obviously not representative of the overall Linux experience but I recently realised that messing around on the Linux bits in ChromeOS would be a pretty good way to learn Terminal things, at least for Debian. It's sandboxed so it doesn't matter if you screw up and if you do it's like two or three clicks to start afresh, way simpler than setting up and resetting a standard VM for the inexperienced. It, of course, means using a ChromeOS device but maybe that can be a secondary lesson on having megacorps profit from your data.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I have experience teaching Linux to adults only, but that seems to be funnier

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

G-compris is great for kids. Both of my kids have only ever used Linux or Chrome OS.

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