May 3, 2011

My Daughter’s First Laptop… Running Linux!

I am in the process of building the next edition of Bauer-Puntu, and I got started building it using my older Dell Latitude D620. It was a pretty good laptop in it’s time, but it’s five years old now, and let’s face it, five years is 100 in computer years. I finally decided to upgrade.

When one upgrades, there is always a decision that has to be made on what to do with the old equipment. Should I take it to be recycled? Should I donate it to charity? I decided that it was time to start getting my daughter excited about Linux!

Since my daughter is only six years old, I decided to start her off pretty easy with a kid friendly Linux distribution. I decided to go with Qimo Linux. What is Qimo? Here is the description from their page:

Qimo 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.

Qimo's interface has been designed to be intuitive and easy to use, providing large icons for all installed games, so that even the youngest users have no trouble selecting the activity they want.

kayla-qimo

Let me tell you, my daughter is super excited about having her own laptop, and also about all the kid friendly games that come with it. I am super excited that she can finally get into learning computers at an early age.

I have the same views on learning as my father. Learn the harder stuff first, and the easy stuff will come naturally. He made me learn to tie my shoes before he let me have Velcro shoes. He made me learn to tell time with a standard watch before letting me have a digital watch. He made me learn to drive a stick-shift before letting me drive an automatic. In that same tradition, I want my daughter to learn Linux, then using Windows and OSX will be a breeze!

Do your kids have computers? What did you start them off with? How old were they when you first got them into computers? Let me know in the comments.

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