What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?

[Gabor Szabo]

Mordecha,

That actually sounds like a brilliant idea.

Maybe I could ask them to bring all kinds of spare parts of a
computer and old computers they might have at home and we
could try to put together one ore more new computers and
install Linux on it.

This project could be spread on several meetings as we might
not be able to finish it within 1 hour.

I am a bit afraid though that
1) I won't be able to handle the task - after all I have hardly
    touched any hardware recently
2) What if some of the pieces are not or not well supported by Linux?
3) Would it be interesting in the end to have an old computer?


BTW I am most familiar with Ubuntu as I have been using it in
the last couple of years but I wonder if it isn't too bloated for
old and under-powered computers? Maybe I should try to install
DSL http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ ?

regards
   Gabor


2011/1/10 Mordecha Behar <mordecha.behar at mail.huji.ac.il>:
> Another thing I just thought of.
> As has been correctly pointed out, kids this age are nearly always
> end-users.
> So why not point out the end user experience of Linux? Lots of eye-candy,
> stability, not needing to reboot every time you install a program, the
> simplicity of finding and installing programs (package managers), great
> runtime on old hardware...
> In fact, that might be a nice class or group project for them to do,
> resurrect an old defunct computer and install Linux on it.
> מחשב לכל ילד is a nice program, but we all know that they lack funds. How
> cool would it be for this class to have an entire bank of computers that
> people have thrown out and work perfectly well? Half of the computers in my
> house are +6 years old and run Linux. Why not the classrooms?
>
> On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Nadav Har'El <nyh at math.technion.ac.il>
> wrote:
>>
>> There have been some very good ideas in this thread (and I'm collecting
>> them
>> to use on my daughter when she's a little older ;-)), and I just wanted to
>> add my two cents:
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 10, 2011, Alex Shnitman wrote about "Re: What to tell 13 year
>> old kids about Linux and Open Source?":
>> > Come on, guys, kids don't give a rat's ass about what's legal and what
>> > isn't. Even many adults don't. Those arguments may work in corporations,
>> > but
>> > certainly not in a school. Same thing about vendor lock-in: you're
>> > talking
>> > in adult terms here, they know nothing about it and they don't care.
>>
>> I agree. But it's not exactly that kids don't care what is illegal and
>> what
>> isn't - (most of) the same 13-year-old kids will not be shoplifting, or
>> stealing from friends, for example - but when kids see that the *norms*
>> are
>> different from the *written laws*, they tend to accept the former (if they
>> even know the latter). When a kid sees all kids around him are copying
>> software, and no adult is doing anything to actively stop it, he learns
>> that
>> it is acceptable.
>>
>> > The first thing I'd stress is customizability, as Mordechay has
>> > excellently
>> > mentioned. "Imagine that you write code that is then used by millions of
>> > people all over the world." That kind of thing talks to kids. The second
>> > thing is the community aspect: you can enter chat rooms / forums and get
>> > help for the software you use. And if you wrote something or became an
>> > expert in something, people will come to you for advice. That's really
>> > cool.
>>
>> I think we need to separate between two completely different types of kids
>> -
>> wanabee-programmers, and the rest of the kids.
>>
>> To wanabee-programmers, I'd stress the customizability, possibility to
>> modify
>> everything the program does, learning from other people's code, publishing
>> your version to others, and so on, as well as the community aspects. You
>> can tell them that with Linux they can do on their home computer amazing
>> stuff like run their own servers just like the big companies do.
>>
>> To everyone else, I doubt these will be interesting - I doubt that 80% of
>> the kids in a typical class will even consider looking at source code, or
>> hang around in "geeky" forums about software. To these kids, I do believe
>> that other issues can be appealing, including freeness (tell them their
>> parents can save 1,000 shekels when buying a new computer by not buying
>> Windows or Office), and, belive it or not, convenience (Linux
>> distributions
>> come with hundreds of software, that on Windows you need to install
>> separately).
>>
>> You can also tell them that X% of the Internet's servers use free
>> software,
>> that their favorite companies like Google, Facebook or whatever use them,
>> and so on.
>>
>> You can tell them that Linux programmers are rarer and make more money in
>> the job market ;-)
>>
>> You can tell them about the possibility of running both Windows and Linux,
>> e.g., using a live CD or a virtual machine (although the latter is pretty
>> complicated).
>>
>> And tell us how it went!
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Nadav.
>>
>> --
>> Nadav Har'El                        |       Monday, Jan 10 2011, 5 Shevat
>> 5771
>> nyh at math.technion.ac.il
>> |-----------------------------------------
>> Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Willpower: The ability to eat only
>> one
>> http://nadav.harel.org.il           |salted peanut.