On 07/27/2011 04:45 AM, Andreas Tille wrote: > On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 10:39:24PM +0200, Jean-Michel Philippe wrote: >> As I told to Paul in a private mail, DoudouLinux seems to have achieved >> many wishes of the Debian Jr. project. As we want to keep as closest as >> possible to Debian, it appears to me that our work will necessarily meet >> the job you are proposing to us to revive this project. We just need to >> change a bit our way to work. We also need to read the official >> documentation you pointed about pure blends to be sure to match the >> standards. > > As I said: Feel free to ask in case of any kind of question.
DoudouLinux is indeed a very interesting project with some overlap with Debian Jr. I hope we can mutually benefit from interaction. I notice that support for Squeeze is missing even though we're now five months past the release date. I think one of the big benefits of working with Debian directly would be to close this gap so that each new release of Debian would immediately be usable both by adults and children on the day it is announced to the world. Philosophically, I think DoudouLinux may be mostly in agreement with my vision for the Debian Jr. project, and if not in outright disagreement on some of the other points, at least not so far off that I would consider it a bad thing for DoudouLinux to participate in reviving the project . For example, from http://doudoulinux.org/web/english/about/index.html "It aims at making computer use as simple and pleasant as possible ..." Not that I disagree with this, but "as simple as possible" was not one of Debian Jr.'s original goals. The project simply grew out of as shared interest amongst developers to meet what they perceived as the needs of their own children, or children close to them. I hope what we subsequently produced was valuable to others even without explicitly seeking to meet their needs. What this meant in practical terms was that we assumed skilled Debian users were always helping children to use their systems, covering any gap that might exist between what a child can understand and use on their own without frustration, and the reality that Debian is a highly complex and versatile OS with lots of "surprises" for adults and children alike (not all bad surprises, though! :) We saw Debian use for the child as a journey that would grow both child and helper alike in communicating with the rest of the free software community and continuing to ensure the software met their needs. That being said, I think I'm not alone among Debian developers in wishing as many people as possible, both children and adults, be able to use Debian for whatever purpose they want without Debian getting in the way of what they want and need to do. If I see some software in Debian that is needlessly complex and see a way to fix it, I file a bug. That applies equally to software "for children" and software "for adults". Nor do I think there needs to be a strict division between these two categories. Why shouldn't adults enjoy simpler, less cluttered desktops that put what they want to use most often in the forefront and tucks the rest out of the way, but makes it easy for them to find again. And isn't that what we want for children too? Yet somehow we seem to tolerate that such horrendous interfaces that fail to accomplish this are "acceptable" for adults. So I would not fundamentally disagree that we should make Debian "as simple and pleasant as possible [for children] to use", but would expand that to say that it applies equally to adults, and insofar as we can accomplish this for adults we'll accomplish it too for children at the same time. This is why I was never terribly interested in custom, made-for-kids desktops, though I certainly don't fault DoudouLinux for having put energy into this or think it has no value. I wanted those helping children to have a similar desktop to children, but observe carefully what pleases children and what frustrates them to feed back improvements into the *overall* improved quality and ease of use of Debian, leveraging, if you will, the experiences with children into improvements for the whole community. Maybe that was a too-idealistic vision that can't ever be fully realized because on the whole, the number of helpers that can successfully pull this off are too few, and most children have to rely on much less capable helpers, but that is the thought that compelled me to undertake this work. I felt that to try to reduce it to the lowest common denominator: the unskilled novice parent or teacher, we would end up with the blind leading the blind, which would not benefit either the helper or the child. Not only that, but we'd get away from what we knew best: as developers with children of our own or children close to us, we knew ourselves, the children and systems we looked after. That put us in the best position to solve problems within this sphere. All that being said, I have long ago given up the Debian Jr. for others to take over, so it will be up to them to shape what sort of project it will continue to be if they revive it. I do hope what I've said above makes some sort of sense, though, and is useful to help continue to make Debian better for children in the years to come. Ben -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
