Filed under: Fun, Games, Kids, Linux
The best Linux games for kids
by M. Edward (Ed) Borasky Dec 29th 2009 at 7:30PM
The best collection of Linux educational software for all ages that I know of is the openSUSE-Edu Li-f-e (Linux for Education) Live DVD. You can get it at http://en.opensuse.org/Education/Live#Download. There are some screen shots here.
This is a Live DVD - you simply place the DVD in the computer's DVD drive and reboot the machine from it. When the machine comes up, you will be running Linux. Normally, the software won't write to your computer's hard drive unless you specifically ask it to. So a couple of reminders:
- You'll want to plug in a USB disk drive / memory stick for documents you want to save or share with other users or machines.
- When you shut the computer down and remove the DVD, it will come back up just as it was before.
For the younger children, six years old and up, there are four packages designed to teach programming: EToys from the One Laptop Per Child project, Scratch from MIT, Little Wizard and XLogo. Moving on to games, one of the best collections of games for younger children, two years old and up, is GCompris. There is also the Sugar desktop from the One Laptop Per Child project.
The live DVD includes the "Tux4Kids" family of games: Tux Math, Tux Paint and Tux Typing. It also includes Tux Math Scrabble, Tux Wordsmith and Multiplication Station from Asymptopia Software. Another typing training game, Klavaro, is also available. There are some more general learning packages on the DVD as well. You'll find Brain Workshop, a dual-and-back memory training game, the Marble globe program and the jMemorize and iGNUit flashcard programs.
There are also games for adults - board games card games, puzzles and even some arcade games. Many of these will be suitable for the older children. Adult users will also find a complete selection of office and Internet software:
- Graphics and desktop publishing. A partial list is here.
- The OpenOffice.org productivity suite, the Gobby collaborative editor, the Okular PDF viewer, PdfMod PDF editor and the Evolution e-mail / calendaring package.
- The Ekiga Softphone voice over IP and video conferencing package.
- The Firefox browser, XChat IRC client, Pidgin and Kopete Instant Messaging clients, Chokoq and Gwibber Twitter clients and many more Internet tools.
- Both the Gnome and KDE desktops.
The Illusionist's Dream is a simple platformer; you play as a magician who needs to get through each level by transforming into any number of animals that you encounter along the way.
Each animal can do different things; the butterfly can obviously fly, but if it encounters a frog, the frog eats it, and you have to start over again. There's also a fox that runs fast and leaps far, but it eats any rabbits that cross its path. That means that, if you may need to be a rabbit later on, you need to take that into account ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
FrightenedByPenguins said 12:01AM on 12-30-2009
I think as far as educational youngling software goes the best I have come across so far is 'Qimo'. My 3 year old took immediately to Packid, a pacman clone in the Childsplay package included on the live cd, it also includes the Tux4kids and EToys packages which you've already covered, as well as a few others I think. I'm sure he'll get into these other more advanced programs as the months roll on.
It doesn't cover any Bible, Hindi or Qur'an related teachings, as far as I can tell although I have yet to fully test for hypnotic suggestions hidden deep within the source code.
The Qimo OS has been a great way to help introduce my son to IT without confusing him by using a radically different operating system that he sees mammy or daddy using on a day to day basis, or taking him away from the same basic controls he's used to using when exploring the kid friendly websites that he already frequents.
I currently just run it from a live cd as the old lap top I have earmarked for him is so old it’s [insert yo mama joke].
I definitely want to go further down this road than just having it as a temporary stand in when he wants some computer destroying time though, so I’ll be checking all alternatives out.
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Geir said 4:36AM on 12-30-2009
I've heard good things about this one too, and I will let my daughter try it. She'll be 3 in February, and she should start doing something else than just watch YouTube videos on the computer.... :-)