[solved] Need simple fast stable OS for my daughter

fladi · 2015-03-01 08:43:09

Good morning,

I don't know where to put this topic to so hopefully I am wright here.

I for myself run Arch but I need a very simple stable fast OS for my 5 year old daughters laptop. She prints drawings, watches comics on youtube, plays online flash games, that's it. I want to use an OS apart from the usual bloatware/malware/spyware/commercial suspects aka Ubuntu/SUSE/Fedora.

So I have got 3 candidates in mind:

1. Peppermint OS
2. Zorin OS
3. LXLE

So any recommendations ? I would be very happy if you share your experience. Thanx in advance.

Last edited by fladi (2015-03-04 04:28:03)

jasonwryan · 2015-03-01 08:45:28

My daughter uses, and loves, Crunchbang.

Larsson · 2015-03-01 08:51:01

Buy a chromebook, I think it also works with flash games.

Last edited by Larsson (2015-03-01 08:51:57)

Rasi · 2015-03-01 09:47:52

fladi wrote:

I want to use an OS apart from the usual bloatware/malware/spyware/commercial suspects aka Ubuntu/SUSE/Fedora.
[...]
1. Peppermint OS
2. Zorin OS
3. LXLE

...yet all your choices use ubuntu as backend...

Awebb · 2015-03-01 10:50:55

Your five years old daughter will probably not perform any administrative tasks at 5 years. How about Arch then, if you end up being the IT guy anyway?

graysky · 2015-03-01 12:06:20

Awebb wrote:

Your five years old daughter will probably not perform any administrative tasks at 5 years. How about Arch then, if you end up being the IT guy anyway?

+1 for this

fladi · 2015-03-01 12:48:35

jasonwryan wrote:

My daughter uses, and loves, Crunchbang.

Not supported anymore.

fladi · 2015-03-01 12:49:09

Larsson wrote:

Buy a chromebook, I think it also works with flash games.

Chromebook = Google, no chance but thanx.

fladi · 2015-03-01 12:50:06

graysky wrote:

Awebb wrote:
Your five years old daughter will probably not perform any administrative tasks at 5 years. How about Arch then, if you end up being the IT guy anyway?
+1 for this

Alad · 2015-03-01 14:15:30

fladi wrote:

jasonwryan wrote:
My daughter uses, and loves, Crunchbang.
Not supported anymore.

Nonsense. The community has always supported Crunchbang, and it still gets security updates from Debian.

But I agree with Awebb. I also wouldn't give it network access beyond installation, but that's up to you.

Last edited by Alad (2015-03-01 17:42:33)

Trilby · 2015-03-01 15:18:11

EDIT: <some content removed> Thanks for trimming your post Alad, I'll also trim my perhaps overly-forceful response. CrunchBang owes as much to an active community as it does to the person who started that community.

On topic - I agree with Awebb and others above. Unless she is going to learn to maintain it, you might as well go with what you are comfortable managing for her. You can put on an easy to use WM or DE (maybe xfce).

Last edited by Trilby (2015-03-01 18:21:32)

Alad · 2015-03-01 15:27:38

<snipped>

I apologize for putting it that way, and I do am grateful for all the work corenominal invested in #!. My point is that I was one of the larger contributors to that distro and felt efforts were ignored, with either no reply, or "wait until the next release before making changes". When after all this time the answer is, there will be no next release, it feels all those efforts were shot down in one go. And yes, that's "discouraging creative people from contributing" just as well.

But I've drifted enough from the topic. Suffice to say CB is one of the better supported distros out there.

Last edited by Alad (2015-03-01 20:30:11)

MoonSwan · 2015-03-01 20:01:40

Lubuntu (!) has a "netbook" interface mode (I discovered this quite by accident) that is very similar to the stock Asus 701 netbook's original interface. It's basically icons on a bland background. No menus at all. I know you don't want to use ubuntu but, honestly, you could theoretically never update it or do so with the Synaptic software. It's quite good. And, for the record, I am not an Ubuntu fan at all but this netbook GUI really impressed me! I'm seriously considering running it on my own netbooks.

MrElg · 2015-03-01 22:09:48

fladi wrote:

Need 1.simple 2.fast 3.stable OS for my daughter

Have you tried KinderEgg Linux?

fladi wrote:

Zorin

I tried this one for my father. But I wouldn't say that it has been entirely stable. So it is not my top recommendation from my experience.

If you don't mind Ubuntu being in the back, and that your daughter might learn something from it. Why not try Bodhi. It comes with almost nothing, so you can decide what spyware to add yourself. And it uses Enlightenment as a DM, so you can set it up to look like an Apple product. Young girls love that.

Fred Barclay · 2015-03-01 22:59:20

What about Linux Mint (which IS based on Ubuntu), or LMDE (Debian-based, about to be Debian Stable-based) ?

jasonwryan · 2015-03-01 23:04:20

MrElg wrote:

And it uses Enlightenment as a DM, so you can set it up to look like an Apple product. Young girls love that.

My daughter is just as happy without X. Please don't reinforce gender stereotypes here: we welcome people with technical aptitude and open minds.

Rasi · 2015-03-02 00:17:08

MrElg wrote:

Have you tried KinderEgg Linux?

google finds nothing...

EscapedNull · 2015-03-02 01:01:13

fladi wrote:

I want to use an OS apart from the usual bloatware/malware/spyware/commercial suspects aka Ubuntu/SUSE/Fedora.

Minimal systems tend to do well here. The less it comes with, more you know about what's on it. If you want the minimalism of Arch and the stability of Ubuntu, Debian with XFCE/LXDE/OpenBox might be a good compromise.

Awebb wrote:

Your five years old daughter will probably not perform any administrative tasks at 5 years. How about Arch then, if you end up being the IT guy anyway?

This is what it ultimately comes down to. With Arch can expect to set aside maintenance time every couple of months, or however often you feel like upgrading. With Debian, you can probably get more time between each upgrade and less time spent on each one, but it still won't go away completely.

Distro Watch has overviews of just about every distro out there. Look at the beginners category and compare a few distros.

drcouzelis · 2015-03-02 02:22:49

fladi wrote:

I need a very simple stable fast OS for my 5 year old daughters laptop.

It doesn't matter which operating system you use. She will learn to use whatever you put in front of her.

The reason I know this is because I refurbished an iMac G4 for my two year old daughter. By the time she was just about to turn three, she knew how to turn it on, play her music collection, watch videos, play the simple games I installed, use basic keyboard commands, and draw pictures using TuxPaint and the mouse. (I didn't even teach her how to do all of those things.)

When she was three (and after the iMac died), I set her up with an old laptop running Arch Linux (because that's what I know best). I gave her a nice Openbox configuration. She was able to play all her online Flash games, print, and watch her videos (just like your daughter wants to) without a problem.

She will learn to use whatever you give her.

...more info, if you're interested:

The iMac had no Internet connection (when she was using it). Her current system has Chromium with a whitelist installed. For both systems, I set them up nicely then made a complete local hidden backup copy of her home directory then let her have add it. She'd use the computer for some time, and then when enough files would get moved, deleted, and rearranged, I'd just reset everything. But that was only an issue when she was super young. Nowadays she just uses my computer.

poiuyt23 · 2015-03-02 13:30:07

Were I to choose a system for someone else to use but for me to administer I would probably choose Slackware. Installation to a KDE desktop is a piece of cake, killed boot loaders can be solved quickly and easily enough that a well behaved end user and I could walk through it on the phone if needed.

Mr_ED-horsey · 2015-03-03 12:20:13

I would just install Debian Stable with Xfce with an administrative account for you and a generic user account for your daughter. Once that's set up with applications, multimedia and flash support it's just going to work and not give her any problems, and since you'll be doing the maintenance it won't be giving you any problems either.

Awebb · 2015-03-03 12:27:22

poiuyt23 wrote:

... can be solved quickly and easily enough that a well behaved end user and I could walk through it on the phone if needed.

I can guide a well behaved end user through three pages of ASM if a) I knew ASM and b) there would be a single well behaved end user on this planet.

Trilby · 2015-03-03 12:33:04

@Awebb, is that like archlinux being designed for the comptentant linux user, yet we all use it anyway? Note the use of definite article in "the competant linux user" - aparently there is only one, and we have yet to find him/her.

poiuyt23 · 2015-03-03 13:19:51

Awebb wrote:

I can guide a well behaved end user through three pages of ASM if a) I knew ASM and b) there would be a single well behaved end user on this planet.

I'll admit that the concept is a little mind blowing but provided that they remember that they are my eyes and hands we're usually good.... I still giggle about an exchange I heard some years back of "Do you have a janitor? ..... OK could you please put him on the phone?"

fladi · 2015-03-04 04:28:51

Gentlemen, many a thanx for your decent replies. I now installed Arch with LXDE and firefox, so this thread is solved.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-03-01 08:43:09

[solved] Need simple fast stable OS for my daughter

#2 2015-03-01 08:45:28

Re: [solved] Need simple fast stable OS for my daughter

#3 2015-03-01 08:51:01

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#4 2015-03-01 09:47:52

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#5 2015-03-01 10:50:55

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#6 2015-03-01 12:06:20

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#7 2015-03-01 12:48:35

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#8 2015-03-01 12:49:09

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