Hi Steven, Sorry for this enormous delay with reply and thank you for detailed answer.
I think you showing a brilliant example of good parenting - thoughtful and thorough. While I praise your attitude for introducing your son to GNU/Linux and games may I ask what games you consider to be your favorite so far? Your experience may helpful for some of us. I respect your agnostic position regarding GNU/Linux distribution even though I disagree. :) I realized that in this short email I can't properly explain why I called Mandriva "impaired" comparing to Debian. I hope to clarify the matter in the essay I'm writing so hopefully I'll send you a link to it some time later when it will be finished. (if you don't mind). Regards, Dmitry. On 3 July 2011 17:42, Steven Tucker <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Dmitry, > > You do bring up some valid points. I was a Debian user for a very long time > mainly due to the very wide range of packages, unmatched by any other distro > I tried (I have all my servers running Debian or Ubuntu LTS, including an > academic computing cluster). I am though, almost totally Distro agnostic. If > it's GNU/Linux it will be familiar enough not to get in the way of doing > stuff, and there will be a way to get what I want, it basically just comes > down to the amount of effort. I moved to Ubuntu which at the time (may still > be the case) had less packages, if I wanted something obscure it was far more > likely to be packaged in Debian, but I moved never the less, as Ubuntu > required less configuring and for the most part required less effort. > > Moving to Mandriva is much the same. It is GNU/Linux so has all the tools and > capabilities I am after, as for range of packages, so far it has had > everything I wanted and more, if there are some more obscure packages that it > does not have, then on balance, overall I would still be happy to use > Mandriva and build/package the 1 or 2 programs I want, though as I said, > there is nothing yet that has not been available. > > As far as preinstalling the games, part of the fun for him is being > independent and searching for games, he seems to find it quite rewarding > being able to do this himself. If he breaks something, no problem its his > computer. He then gets to do the install process, more fun and learning. > > It's not a choice between a distro and time with my son. His computer is in > the living room and fully supervised at all times (even youtube can be > disturbing at times). The whole distro change was totally done in > consultation with my son, every choice was confirmed by him. In time, if he > is interested and wants to learn, I will teach him how to do things on the > command line, and hopefully how to program. The computer is not used as a > babysitter, it is very much the opposite, it's a chance for him to learn by > looking things up, or learning how to use it. I didn't even make the decision > for him to use Linux, I gave him a dual boot system (with windows7) and he > chose to use Linux only, as he used windows at school, so his logic was he > could learn something else at home (I was very proud!). We end up discussing > aspect of computing in general, or FOSS. > > > I certainly wouldn't call Mandriva "impaired". > > Anyway, it's interesting to hear different points of view, but for my son > right now, Mandriva is the right choice. If next month he prefers Debian, or > OpenSuse or Fedora or Ubuntu or gnome3 over KDE then in this fantastic > ecosystem called FOSS, he is empowered to change, as often as he likes. > The only criteria is that it is what he wants to do, even if its just to try > something different, or just for fun. > > > Cheers > Tuxta > -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
