MX Linux Forum

I think it would be great to build this in such a way that it can be maintained over the years.

A few years back, there was quite a bit of interest, but, as with me also with others,
as their kids or condition changed they no longer had the interest. Also, like mine,
they were one-off sorts of builds that required way too much manual building.

BitJam's suggestion for the long haul is, IMHO, a good place to begin.
It offers ease of rebuilding, plus the ease of more automated modifying and updating.

BTW: I suggest either 2 versions or at least separating teachers' resources from the Kid's Desktop.
Just makes it easier to deliver to the kids.

Screenshot looks nice.
I will throw out a few thoughts, though perhaps slightly controversial, but many schools here in the U.S. use Chromebooks, and everything revolves around that with Google Docs, Sheets, and Gmail. If you were wanting to get them prepared for school those apps in the Google/Chrome sphere might be useful.
It might also be interesting to pre-load some Project Gutenberg children's books that are in the public domain. Fbreader might be worth looking at, I haven't used it in years but their mobile version is nice, so hopefully it has improved on Linux.
Kids are used to larger print in their books, so using larger fonts system-wide might be an idea.
Good job. A worthy project :)

Used to be one of the first programs I installed was mcomix, which I have replaced with yacreader as it not only reads my wonderful collection of Classics Illustrated comic books (originally obtained via torrent download), but pdf files as well. Seems to me that if you set up a printer to work with it, that geany could function as a basic word processor, but I may be wrong. And then there's the command line word processor "wordgrinder".

@BitJam Thank you. I'll definitely consider that.
But first, I'd like to get a reasonable operating base.
I certainly think there is a need for something (that isn't Apple based) in this space. I, also, don't want what I build to veer from its MX Linux roots.

@Richard
BTW: I suggest either 2 versions or at least separating teachers' resources from the Kid's Desktop.
Just makes it easier to deliver to the kids.

I tend to agree. The real challenge is with menuing. I have tried all sorts of menus, docks, launchers. In the end, those 'ultra-simple' xfce panels work best. The bottom line is I don't want the 'students' to have all the 'teacher' stuff cluttering their desktop.

@KBD
the U.S. use Chromebooks, and everything revolves around that with Google Docs, Sheets, and Gmail.

The schools where I live in Colorado are a bastion of Apples. Adding links to the Google Suit of Tools (via Internet) is no problem. I may end up there. I had really hooped to find something more 'kid friendly', though.

You might also look at Fedora's [Sugar on a stick?] version. They may have a kid friendly word processor on it--if you can get past the weird desktop navigational environment. Don't know what it's called now--been a while since I used it last.

You might also look at Fedora's [Sugar on a stick?] version. They may have a kid friendly word processor on it--if you can get past the weird desktop navigational environment. Don't know what it's called now--been a while since I used it last.
https://spins.fedoraproject.org/soas/

manyroads wrote: Wed Jan 09, 2019 4:13 pm But first, I'd like to get a reasonable operating base.

Yes, that is what we always recommend. I suggest doing it on a live system using persistence and/or live-remaster. But others are more comfortable with installed.

When Adrian makes his monthly snapshots he does it from a live system. He saves his work with snapshot but for development purposes, it is easier to save via live-remaster.

One reason I think developing on a live system is so great is because you have several ways to easily roll back to different versions. For example if you use semi-automatic dynamic root persistence, you get to choose whether you save the changes you made in this session or not. When you reach a point when you want to save things more permanently then do a live-remaster. You get to add a label/title to each remaster and you get to stash them away.

So even with no manual intervention you have the options to:

1) Save the current session, or not, with root persistence
2) Roll back to the last time you did a remaster by disabling persistence
3) Roll back to the previous remaster with the "rollback" boot option

The live system can also provide a "kiosk mode" when you deploy. So even if people make changes to system, those changes are tossed on the next reboot. You could also let people save changes under the /home directory while changes to the system are tossed. All of these features are also available when you do a frugal install.

@BitJam this all makes it sound like I probably ought to a have dedicated PC on which to do the work. I do have an old laptop, so that's no real problem.

Is there a set of documentation somewhere that details all this out. "Kiosk mode" and "frugal install" are two items with which I'm not familiar. The top 80+/-% of your note I'm clear on...

I've had a look at your snapshot; it's an interesting approach.

Perhaps if I outline what I have done in the past, there might be some food for thought for you?

I set up a machine for a household that had seven visiting grandchildren, with ages ranging from two to fifteen. I created four users; the first three on the basis of age groups, the fourth for administration. The first user profile for the youngest group had the panel auto-hidden, with large screen icons to a small selection of programs and web links. Very young children's first exposure to technology is often via parents' phone, or tables, so this approach looks familiar to them. In the UK, the best website for this age group is the BBC's 'CBeebies'. This is not available globally, but I understand there is an international version. Otherwise, Disney or Nickleodeon might have something similar; a link to one or more of those is a must. I would avoid having changing wallpaper for these users as they will be confused by the unfamiliar.

The second user group had a more conventional desktop. I used the Edit Application utility to hide a lot of stuff, and set up desktop icons for things like Scratch 1.4, and YouTube Kids.

The third user group was essentially just a normal desktop, with Scratch, and some items from the Secondary section of the Package Installer.

Good luck with whatever you end up with; schools don't do computing education well, at least here in the UK, so everything we can do is of benefit.

Chris