[IDEA] Haiku for Kids

[forart.it]

I recently discovered Qimo, which is

a desktop operating system designed for kids. Based on the open source Ubuntu Linux desktop, Qimo comes pre-installed with educational games for children aged 3 and up.

It sounds good, but system requirements are not that low (of course, it’s Ubuntu !):

Qimo needs a minimum of 256MB of memory to run from the CD, or 192MB to install. At least 6 GB of hard drive space is recommended, and a 400MHz or faster CPU.

I personally tried it in a 750MHz Athlon / 256Mb RAM / 20 Gb HD and it’s rather slow, which irritates contemporary childrens…

An Haiku-based distro for kids would be subtile spreading strategy, IMHO…

[michel]

Well, what’s stopping you? Change the name, artwork and credits as required by the license and branding policy, slap on a bunch of old BeOS games and compile away. Games are the one thing Haikuware is not short of. Let us know how it works out.

I doubt it will be successful. Once your main selling point becomes “this will work on old computers” you are competing with the win95 installation that is already on that old computer. It is running just fine, the bugs were sorted out a decade ago. Why on earth would they change it? Believe me, I’ve seen this since the days of GeoWorks Ensemble. Pitching your OS to obsolete hardware is the fastest way to talk yourself into irrelevance.

This does not mean that it is bad for the devs to focus on optimization, but mainly because that allows us to say “This runs as fast as lightning on MODERN hardware”!

So please, don’t just post wild ideas here and expect someone, anyone to implement it. Read the policy statements then just go ahead and DO it and tell us where we can download the results. People may like it or not, but you will get respect for having made the attempt.

[cipri]

Yes. Which children do have 750MHz computer? Really. Even their smartphone is faster than that.
And i dont know what kids you mean. But even the small kids want games for the browser and youtube. And that’s not possible with haiku at the moment (and with syllable even a lot less).

Haiku even as a “general purpose os” has just very few users, and you come up with a specialisation to “os for kids”.

Haiku is still at the beginning, and there still a lot missing, and you want to suggest that we start writing educatioal applications for children of 3 years and up???
For that the nintendo handhelds are much better suited and make more fun.

I saw also on the syllable forum that you are posting such “ideas”, and I have no idea, how you can still have such ideas, now after spending so many years with alternative operating systems, you should have an idea of what is realistic and what not.

[forart.it]

@cipri

I saw also on the syllable forum that you are posting such “ideas”, and I have no idea, how you can still have such ideas, now after spending so many years with alternative operating systems, you should have an idea of what is realistic and what not.

…then why are you wasting YOUR time by posting useless comments ?

@cipri

Yes. Which children do have 750MHz computer? Really. Even their smartphone is faster than that.

Dunno where you live, but here in Italy (and I believe in many other European - and not only - countries too) kindergarten & primary schools’ computer labs are not that up-to-date !
I saw many PIII/Win98 still in use !!!

…and there are many Trashware projects around that aims to reuse old hardware for educational purposes: unfortunally are all Linux-driven, so old hw is badly reused (IMHO).

@cipri

But even the small kids want games for the browser and youtube.

It’s not safe to let childrens access the internet, so i’m talking about standalone non-networked workstations.

@cipri

you want to suggest that we start writing educatioal applications for children of 3 years and up???

No, i’m suggesting to PORT educational software to Haiku (and, why not, to Syllable too) then “put togheter” a distro for kids.

@cipri

For that the nintendo handhelds are much better suited and make more fun.

I’m talking about EDUCATIONAL software, not games: do you understand the difference ?

[cipri]

Perhaps you dont know, but on the nintendo handhelds are also educational software, for example for learning vocabulary, math,… and so on.
And a good educational software for a kid, has to have the feeling of a game, so that the kid has fun continuing using it.

And related to “port”. Perhaps you dont know, but “porting” a gui application can be more hard then writing it from scratch. And I’m sorry to tell, but we dont have yet an “magical porting application” where you just need to press the “port” button.

I guess you should write your genius ideea also on the forum of skyos, perhaps that will determine Robert to stop writing apps for iOS, and returning back to skyos development. :-))

Remark:
It would have been no problem, no see such useless ideas coming from a newbie, but you have spend so many years with alternative operating systems, that you should already have a little idea what is realistic and what what not. But you still continue spreading all the time various genius ideas, that everybody ignores.
At the moment i have just two explications for you behaviour:

1. you are bored. In that case perhaps you should buy a pet, or find another hobby.
   or
2. you feel the necessity to contribuite somehow to a project, then i recommand you to consider a donation instead. It would make much more sense.

In normal case I wouldn’t have answered (like the others) to a such useless idea, but since i see you since years making the posts of the same quality, i decided to help you to face the reality. That’s my last post related to you idea, since i really should spend the time with something else.

[bbjimmy]

The idea is sound.

The problem is that Haiku is not ready for prime time yet.

Once Haiku reaches R1 this would make an interesting project.

[forart.it]

[quote=cipri]Perhaps you dont know, but on the nintendo handhelds are also educational software, for example for learning vocabulary, math,… and so on.
And a good educational software for a kid, has to have the feeling of a game, so that the kid has fun continuing using it.[/quote]
Sorry, no: I haven’t used anymore gaming consolles since 80s (ATARI 2600)… I like different “games” !

@cipri

“porting” a gui application can be more hard then writing it from scratch.

But since Haiku is Posix and some software is quite platform-indipendent the porting shouldn’t be so difficoult for a developer…

@cipri

I guess you should write your genius ideea also on the forum of skyos, perhaps that will determine Robert to stop writing apps for iOS, and returning back to skyos development. :-))

Since SkyOS is DEAD, the best idea for SkyOS is to release its sources under an open license, IMHO.
Anyway I’d also suggested to involve Robert in Haiku development…

@cipri

It would have been no problem, no see such useless ideas coming from a newbie, but you have spend so many years with alternative operating systems, that you should already have a little idea what is realistic and what what not. But you still continue spreading all the time various genius ideas, that everybody ignores.

What is useless for you could be useful for others: simple, isn’t it ?

Exactly 'cause I’d spend so many years with open source alternative OSes I don’t expect ANYTHING: btw some project (ReactOS, for example) has benefited - even indirectly - by some of my “ideas” ! (that means that my “strategy” works)

Have you ever heard of “Six degrees of separation” ??? (Six degrees of separation - Wikipedia)

My role in alt-os/open software scene is “simply” to try to create collaborations between projects: this, in long-term vision, would certainly benefit the whole scene.

@cipri

1) you are bored. In that case perhaps you should buy a pet, or find another hobby.

Dhehe: i have 5 cats @ home and i’m a musician. I’m also a member of a local volunteers’ NPO… Every day is almost 100% full.

@cipri

2) you feel the necessity to contribuite somehow to a project, then i recommand you to consider a donation instead. It would make much more sense.

If you understood what I explained above, the strategy is to create interest around the project (Haiku, in our case) in order to bring more people and therefore possible money - and not only - contributions…

@cipri

since i see you since years making the posts of the same quality, i decided to help you to face the reality.

I perfectly face the reality (i hoped to use BeOS/Haiku for multimedia productions… and i’m still using Windows !), but don’t care: it’s not a waste of time for me !

@cipri

That’s my last post related to you idea, since i really should spend the time with something else.

Totally agree: explain / justify my actions it’s a waste of time for me too… ignore my posts next time.

Last but not least: someone (Julian Storer, the main JUCE developer) informed me that my technique is somewhat similar to Astroturfing…

Astroturfing

…i barelly agree, anyway i’d have to admit that’s and agenda-setting technique.

[kurtis]

As a single father, I like the idea. I think this is a good one to hold on for when Haiku is ready for prime.

Just a side note, sure there aren’t any magical ‘port’ buttons out there That’d be awesome! But, if something such as SDL, OpenJDK, Mono, etc… made their way over to Haiku then it wouldn’t be an unrealistic thing to do. However, I know at least the latter two of those won’t make their way over anytime soon. I’m pretty sure SDL was ported way back in the day but I don’t know how well it would carry over now.

[commodorejohn]

I’ll agree that this isn’t a bad idea; I’ve seen plenty of kids who get hand-me-down hardware when their folks upgrade (heck, I was one.) And while it’s getting difficult to find P3s still in use, there’s still plenty of P4 hardware in home environments, which is if anything even worse. (Dunno about schools; last time I was in a school it was G4 eMacs, but that was a little small-town K-12 school, so they may not be the best representation. Though if this would get the PowerPC port back in action… ;P)

However, one thing I would definitely say is that way too many “computing for kids” projects seem to take it to mean “computing for idiots,” nixing file managers, limiting software to a preselected set of “educational” titles, and replacing a useful desktop with giant primary-color buttons and crap like that. I learned Macintosh System 7 in a couple weeks when I was eight, and I was not an exceptional child for picking up new skills; kids today should have even less trouble grokking a well-designed desktop OS.

(Not that it’s being suggested to dumb down the OS here, but just to put that out there: it’s a bad idea to condescend to kids. They know when they’re being insulted, and they aren’t going to be interested in something that doesn’t let them fiddle around with things. I learned more just playing around in Finder and MacPaint than I ever would have with alleged “educational” software.)

[kidd106]

[quote=commodorejohn]I’ll agree that this isn’t a bad idea; I’ve seen plenty of kids who get hand-me-down hardware when their folks upgrade (heck, I was one.)[/quote]So was I. I got a p2, as well as another 1Ghz one when my dad’s hard drive went out. I wouldn’t have learned what I learned about computers if I didn’t have a spare computer to test every other linux distro. Finally, I stopped at Haiku, cause the easy and lightweight api.

On another note, Haiku would be much better at this sort of thing than Linux, because Linux can get buggy at times and be hard even the experienced. For me, Haiku is much easier to learn, and tends to just work.

[forart.it]

@commodorejohn

However, one thing I would definitely say is that way too many “computing for kids” projects seem to take it to mean “computing for idiots,” nixing file managers, limiting software to a preselected set of “educational” titles, and replacing a useful desktop with giant primary-color buttons and crap like that.

I agree, btw “prevention is better than cure”: so it would be great - IMHO - to have a “switchable” interface that let to change default desktop into a simplified one (like Xandros’ “Easy Mode”, for example, that could be also useful for netbooks, tablets, etc) in order to prevent system-settings intentional or accidental changes:

…and an interesting article about it: The Friendly Netbook Desktop | Lifehacker

Last but not least, here’s some Syllable-ports:

https://sites.google.com/site/syllablesoftware/games/educational-games

[bbjimmy]

prevention is better than cure"

This is just missing the point, and what will keep the computer software industry from advancing. In order to learn computing, one must be able to make mistakes, and then cure these mistakes with or without help from others. If we want to make something for kids, we need to preserve the ability for them to fail. There is no advancement if there is no failure, in order to succeed, one must overcome ones own failures.

A kids computer must allow the user to change and investigate everything on the system. It should have development tools and the BASIC programming language, I suggest YAB. It must empower, not limit the user. We may need to disable networking and the Internet, but everything else should be available and changeable.

[commodorejohn]

@forart.it

I agree, btw “prevention is better than cure”: so it would be great - IMHO - to have a “switchable” interface that let to change default desktop into a simplified one (like Xandros’ “Easy Mode”, for example, that could be also useful for netbooks, tablets, etc) in order to prevent system-settings intentional or accidental changes

I wouldn’t even go that far - messing around with the settings is part of learning how computers work, and Haiku is easy enough to reinstall that the worst thing that happens is a computer is put out of commission for a few minutes.

Edit:

@bbjimmy

In order to learn computing, one must be able to make mistakes, and then cure these mistakes with or without help from others. If we want to make something for kids, we need to preserve the ability for them to fail. There is no advancement if there is no failure, in order to succeed, one must overcome ones own failures.

What he said.