Qimo Linux teaches kids to be penguins from an early age
by Brad Linder Mar 23rd 2009 at 5:00PM
Qimo Linux is based on Ubuntu, but it's designed for children over the age of 3. It features large cartoon-like program icons and comes with a bunch of open source and educational games including Tuxmath, Tuxpaint, Tuxtype (a typing game) and even some games that don't have Tux in them like GCompris and Childsplay.
Unlike Edubuntu, Qimo is designed for home use, not classroom use. The operating system can be run from a LiveCD or installed. Qimo uses a simple interface based on Xfce.
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With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
bill cant fart said 6:00PM on 3-23-2009
So is this really for the children, or oldsters?
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Mike Cerm said 6:39PM on 3-23-2009
Qimo? I'm guessing it's pronounced key-mo, like chemotherapy? Who thought that was a good idea?
Be sure to read the warning labels, kids! Caution: Ugly dock at bottom of screen may induce vomiting.
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Nathan Strutz said 7:07PM on 3-23-2009
Qimo must be pronounced key'-mo. The eskimo look & feel with that name seems to fit well. Reminds me of the ABC network affiliate in Anchorage, AK, KIMO channel 13, pronounced the same way.
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Quikboy said 8:17AM on 3-24-2009
I think kids just need to be kids. So what, if they grow up with Windows or OS X and prefer to stick with it? If they love tech a lot, they'll probably look into Linux on their own. Windows and OS X are fine for people, much less kids, who really do not care about the innards of the OS.
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hazard said 8:17AM on 3-24-2009
The project is very cool actually .. clean/basic OS that works well on donated hardware that gives kids from low-income families the opportunity to have their own computer.
David S. said 11:50AM on 3-24-2009
As a parent, I want to make sure that my kid realizes that there are choices in life that most people simply ignore, or don't even realize ARE choices.
One way I try and do that is by highlighting non-obvious options, and while our home machine is an old Window's box, I'm going to boot this up for her and see how she reacts... "Cool, something new!" or "Ewww, something new!" or "What-ev, where's the web?"
Quikboy said 11:28PM on 3-24-2009
Well I guess it doesn't hurt to try things, but when I think of Linux, I think of command prompts and more techie-type things, which I don't think children need to deal with. But if Qimo really is something different, then that isn't as bad as I thought. My first reaction was that it was just trying to get children into a different mindset, rather than let them explore the options on their own.
jeff said 1:13PM on 4-06-2009
This distro still has some major bugs to work out. To name just 2:
1) When running on some computors there is no sound, One must open a terminal and open alsamixer from the command line. Then one must experment with the on/off switches (small boxes) switching the settings one at a time to find out witch one will turn ones sound card to the proper out put (digital rather than analog) This is a bug that is found in many versions of distros based on current ubuntu code.
2) After installing on a hard drive this distro boots up OK but when one updates as one is prompted to do the Qimo desk top disapears and all one is left with is a copy of xfce.
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