On Monday 17 February 2003 10:47, Cromium C wrote:

• Lacture by Richard Stallman @ VJTI on 14th Feb. 2003 @ 6:00pm. *

Hi everybody,

I am an avid Linux fan. But we have gotta face it: what the CM of Goa said was right: in their present avataars, all distros of Linux, including Redhat 8.0, are difficult for kids.

What is the basis of this statement? have you done any study?

We have to keep in mind that in a classroom, there are roughly three varieties of kids: sharp, average, and dumb. We have to try and cater atleast to the first two. And Linux distros are NOT good for average beginners (though the sharp beginners might take to them like fish take to water.)

The solution is to let the kids have the M$ handholding at first. Let em have it easy. After they have picked up the basics, they can move over to Linux.

Absolute rubbish. Unlearning bad habits is a far more difficult, time consuming and costly process. Even worse is that you are spending money to inculcate bad habits (the worst being paying money to buy rubbish).

Especially when they are ready for some programming action. Its very bad to start learning your programming on an M$ platform. (just as its very bad for an average guy to start learning to use a computer on a Linux platform.)

You are confusing familarity with learning ability. For a peson who has never used Win98/95, using GNU/Linux is as easy as learning something new. After he is familiar with Linux he finds it only little more complicated (but a lot more frustrating) using win98. I say this from first hand experience with my 6 year old nephew and his friends. This group were a motley group of neighbourhood kids ranging from 3 yrs to 10 yrs, some going to convent schools and some to vernacular. They used the PC mostly for games. They would happily boot into windows or RH6.2 (this was in 2000) and play whatever games they had decided to play. What did they prefer? The 3 to 5 yr olds most suprisingly preferred linux and it's simple games like smashing billgates. The others preferences depended on which game they liked. some fell for quake, some for flight simulator or car racing and hence linux. my nephew played NBA which was available only on win98 and used that mostly, but kept nagging me to get the linux version because windows would crash.

Bottom line - arbitary statements made without basis are not useful. And I much prefer truthful hotheads than the pleasant misinformed.

There are gonna be some hotheads here who will flame me. But before doing that, just apply your commonsense-

No not commonsense but observation. You will surprise yourself with the results.

your level of intellect ain't shared by all em kids at Goa. The CM of Goa being an IIT guy, could see that.

You dont need Einstein's abilities to start an application on a pc my friend - a 6 yr old is clever enough to use one. Suprising that an IIT alumini fails to understand the learning process (which IMHO is what the IITs are all about).

rgds jtdsouza@softhome.net