Educational/Children Game KNOPPIX Version

[ceat]

Hi,

Would anybody be interested in creating a version of Knoppix which would include mainly children games and educational programs?

I have 2 you children at home, and they love to play around with PC, but:
1) I am allways afraid that they may delete some files or programs
2) I do not like to install piles of game programs (a lot of them not interesting)

A "educational/children game" version of Knoppix would enable them to get on the computer and play and learn at ease, without me worrying.
I am sure this could be interesting for persons with children at home (like me) or in educational environments.

Software could include:
- some games (for different age, very simple ones to maybe some arcades ones etc...).
- some educational software (math, spelling, lenguages, simple image editors/photos manipulation, sky maps, etc...).

Anybody interested? We would need to select the programs, and find someone who could set them up together in this special Knoppix version.

Thanks!

Chris

[Tom Osborne]

My computer auto-boots the CDROM, if I leave a CDROM in the drive. This would make the computer more child proof. Besides games, I think one should have AOL's AIM on the CDROM and have it autostart. With AIM and Firefox available, even young teenagers would find it hard to mess up a computer. They could surf the web all they wanted and never have to worry about viruses and spy-ware. If it had the full AOL software, that would even work for my grandmother. A no risk approach to getting on the internet.

I think your original message needs a wish list of games. Maybe some of your responders will make a list of great games.

[cvevans]

I, too, would like to see an edu/games kids' edition.
Freeciv would be my top choice for must-have game
a typing tutor is #1 edu title for me.

I think it would be wise to have no qtparted, etc;
If we can eliminate set-writeable-partition and just have the boot scan
automount a knoppix.img we can have saved games, etc., without risk.

Another nice option would be a password file on the HD - not writeable, so it
should suffice - add a prog to standard knoppix to change root's password.
One could then password-protect the set-writeable, qtparted, etc.,

I would also add clamav if any mail or downloading is allowed.
(easy add, works fine on knoppix - needs 300Meg+ HD system knoppix.img to install)
(I have not tried the on-access or mail scanner)
see http://www.clamav.net/binary.htm for .deb info.
after editing the sources.list, then in root shell#:
apt-get update
apt-get install clamav
(or be sure you have a big swapfile - 130M+ - if you use kpackage)
We need a boot script to run freshclam before internet access is allowed.

I would like to see internet filtering also -
for broadband users, perhaps squidguard? - see
http://cri.univ-tlse1.fr/documentations/cache/squidguard_en.html
It needs squid and sleepycat's version of Berkeley Database. Get source at
ftp://ftp.univ-tlse1.fr/pub/reseau/cache/squidGuard/squidGuard-1.2.0.tar.gz
perhaps someone can do an auto-fetch script to get
ftp://ftp.univ-tlse1.fr/pub/reseau/cache/squidguard_contrib/blacklists.tar.gz
so squidguard always has an up-to-date blocklist before allowing internet access.
(.squid half is old dups - don't unpack it)

A whitelist on CD could provide backup if download failed,
and allow some access while the 5Meg blacklist is loaded.
It would be good to block non-root access to the database.
http://squidguard.mesd.k12.or.us/
has config hints and a good 3M list at
http://squidguard.mesd.k12.or.us/blacklists.tgz
including a spyware section. (you may want to whitelist yahoo.com)

This would need the password file to allow parents to
whitelist new sites like mail.yahoo.com if they like.