Last night my 4-year-old daughter Pascale and I assembled a PC for the kids to use. I reused gozer, my former HTPC, along with a monitor given to me by my friend Soren, and a keyboard and mouse purchased for tiny hands. I installed Qimo 2.0, a children-focused Linux distribution based on Xubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx”.
Hardware breakdown, for the curious:
- gozer, a Shuttle X27D chassis with an Intel Atom 330 dual-core 1.6 GHz CPU, integrated graphics, 2 GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and a DVD-RW drive. gozer is documented in greater detail in my original HTPC post. The hardware is unchanged.
- A ViewSonic 15″ monitor with DVI input. Resolution is 1280×1024, which is more than enough for the kids.
- A GMYLE Super Slim USB 2.0 Mini Keyboard and Sweex MI055 Mini Optical USB Mouse (Green), both of which are ideal for small hands. I would have preferred a laser mouse, and one without a retractable cable, but apparently no one makes good small mice.
- Super cheap china-brand USB-powered speakers. Perfect for the tinny bleeps and bloops of GCompris.
I haven’t customised the default Qimo desktop, which seems ideal for the kids at present. It is Xubuntu with an “Eskimo and polar bear” background, large-icon launcher bar on bottom, and a number of software packages for children. So far Pascale really enjoys GCompris and Tux Type. She likes it when she hits the keys and Tux eats the fish.
-
I wanted to share with you these great computers for children I noticed for education and use at home at [SPAM REDACTED] they’ve got the best selection I know of of pcs for the kids.
-
Joel,
I have redacted your comment because it is spam.
Your email address has a domain name which is registered by the same people that registered the domain you helpfully “noticed”. Don’t try this on my blog again.
Had you acted ethically and admitted your relationship with that company, I would have left the link up.
-
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link: https://www.tolaris.com/2012/07/20/building-a-pc-for-the-kids/trackback/