Suppose you want to give a child a computer that is 100% #offline, no Internet at all. What is the ideal "baby's first computer"? What is the most empowering platform for them to learn about #computers and #programming?
A standard modern Linux machine that simply has no Internet? (what distro still works well offline?) A #retrocomputing relic? Some weird hardware specifically designed for #children, like the dear departed One Laptop Per Child?
I especially want to keep my child away from LLMs.
Jake in the desert
in reply to Nelson • • •Kimberly Blessing (she/her)
in reply to Nelson • • •I still advocate for kids getting a Commodore 64. The architecture is understandable at a pretty young age, programming is fun, and there are games that help build skills. Going from that platform, newer tech seems less like magic.
Of course, I don't have kids and no evidence this works... Other than that my sisters and I loved it. 😂
Jesse Miksic
in reply to Nelson • • •I’m trying to suss out the implications of learning computing without any internet. It takes away the assumption that the computer is, at heart, an infinite-content machine.
I’d very much want some kind of coding platform with micro-games, that puts the user in the closest possible proximity to the actual code…
You can tell I got a lot of my own early tech exposure through coding tools like QBasic, DOS C++, and then HTML.
Rafaelito 🦤
in reply to Nelson • • •I've been switching to #HaikuOS running on cheap dell Optiplex machines. It feels like an OS from the late 20th century but has lots of nice modern features. Once you install the software you want, there's no need for it to be online and there's plenty of opportunities to bang around under the hood. It's c++ focused but you can do all sorts of development with it (I'm learning Gameboy programming.) Check it out!
haiku-os.org/
Haiku Project
Haiku Projectptvirgo
in reply to Nelson • • •Nelson
in reply to ptvirgo • • •My child is only 4 months old, so my question is certainly premature; but there are older children in my extended family for whom this question may be more immediately relevant.
Still, imagine my child is precocious and able to use a computer at a shockingly young age. My parents always said they put me in front of a computer as soon as I was able to sit up, and true or not I've always been comfortable with computers.
ptvirgo
in reply to Nelson • • •ptvirgo
in reply to Nelson • • •You're probably after a tablet or e-ink device with a locked down desktop UI.
Maybe only a single app (drawing? push button to make a noise?) in full screen mode to start.
Balanced against a collection of physical toys, books, etc, curated with the idea that your kid is building a brain right now and needs a lot of play and as little commercial interference as humanly possible.
Distro will matter less than the curation. Did OLPC quit?
Nelson
in reply to ptvirgo • • •@ptvirgo oh yeah OLPC is super dead, expired in 2014 according to Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Lapt…
Some of the software, like the Sugar desktop environment, still exists, but it's not clear to me how compelling it is now, or how much it suffers from not being paired with the hardware it was designed for: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_%2…
free desktop environment based on GTK+
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Nelson • •Nelson likes this.
Nu Modular
in reply to Nelson • • •One that leans more and more, through each stage of development, on how to develop root infrastructure science, and where to target such sustainability.
Yes, it's that dire now.
Sara
in reply to Nelson • • •when my kids were small there was a lot of talk about a "digital divide" that would leave kids without their own computers behind
as far as I could tell this did not happen -- by the time children get to school they are so unavoidable that the issue becomes more of an arms race with seeing how fast the kid can defeat the "child protection" measures
I have major regrets about allowing computers into my kids' lives early, and I never felt like it was possible to keep them safe
Nelson
in reply to Sara • • •@sarae One of my relatives' children has started vibe coding, and I don't know how to talk with them about it. I'm horrified.
I want my child to have a decent grounding in determinative computing before someone tells them about the slop machines and how you can get autocomplete to do all your thinking for you, and how you can make best friends with a chatbot that will tell you to kill yourself.
I'm not so much worried about the digital divide as despairing about modern computing education.
Sara
in reply to Nelson • • •Piper
in reply to Nelson • • •Nelson
in reply to Piper • • •semitone
in reply to Nelson • • •Nelson
in reply to semitone • • •@semit0ne My child is only 4 months old and wants to drop toys on the ground to make me pick them up. She does not know what computer she wants, or if she does she can't communicate it yet. I want to think about a default starter computer for when she might get interested.
But this is a valid question for older children with more opinions.
Benjamin
in reply to Nelson • • •Hard to say. I gave my kids a laptop with Linux Mint, installed Luanti with VoxeLibre and LibreOffice. That does it for them still. I did not disable or limit internet access beyond basic self defence (ublock and pihole).
We use the internet together, not them alone.
What's your kids" age bracket and intended usecase? Maybe RasPi with MC/Scratch would be fine?
trashHeap :hehim: :verified_gay:
in reply to Nelson • • •IF I was going to do the linux version of this. I'd set them up with Debian Stable, and use Jigdo to download the full DVD set, so they would basically have ALL possible packages offline on optical media. ( Currently 28 DVDs cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/1… )
AND then make sure the sources.list file is set to reference the optical media. (Which it does by default, I think; if you do your installation wholly offline with optical media.)
THIS would give them pretty much everything available for debian offline.
Index of /debian-cd/13.3.0/amd64/jigdo-dvd
cdimage.debian.orgNelson
in reply to trashHeap :hehim: :verified_gay: • • •@trashheap This sounds like a good idea, but one question I have is, are there any LLMs in Debian stable? I'm assuming most LLM integration is with the commercial LLMs that require Internet access, but I don't think offline LLMs are safe for developing minds either.
There are likely other age inappropriate programs in Debian stable (excessively adult or violent games? Does anything else come to mind?) but I imagine I would have to do *some* curation.
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Nelson • •@Nelson @trashHeap :hehim: :verified_gay: any LLM in Debian (main) would need to have full source available and be built from sources, including parameters, and I suspect that very few available LLMs allow *that*.
But depending on the age of the child there would definitely be a need to curate the software installed, because there is probably plenty of non-suitable material.
I think that an offline debian, maybe with something like kiwix to get access to local copies of online stuff (wikipedia and/or others, depending on the age) would work quite well offline, anyway
Nelson likes this.
Jennifer Ekstrand
in reply to Nelson • • •If a Tandy with DOS was good enough for me… no I don’t actually recommend that.
I think I would start with the question: what do you want the child to get out of the experience? Learning typing? Access to edutainment? The ability to mimic adult behavior and pretend to “work” (we gave a nephew a broken keyboard for this and it was a great toy).
Nelson
in reply to Jennifer Ekstrand • • •@bugsnbuns I think the ability to learn about computers in general, without making any assumptions about what they are interested in or capable of learning. And to distract them from trying to use one of my computers.
You raise a good point, if I actually want a very young child to interact with a computer, maybe input devices that don't require fine motor skills might be of interest. I wonder what options exist.
Jonathan E. Magen 🇮🇱🇺🇦☮️
in reply to Nelson • • •Nicolas Ward :dogcow:
in reply to Nelson • • •Nelson
in reply to Nicolas Ward :dogcow: • • •MattisCB
in reply to Nelson • • •Dave
in reply to Nelson • • •Personal thought - YMMV
Just about any Linux distro that doesn't keep nagging about updates. Debian, perhaps.
Ensure it's disconnected, though. No ethernet, no wifi. Should be possiible to set that up somehow. However, you need to have the internet yourself to install packages and updates.
Nelson
in reply to Dave • • •@TheLancashireman *Why* would I need to install updates if the computer is fully offline? Security is much less of a problem when airgapped. There's something to be said for learning in an environment that doesn't change.
Certainly I would need Internet for the initial setup, but I don't see why I would need it afterwards.
Dave
in reply to Nelson • • •In case you find bugs. 😉
But mainly so you can install extra packages that aren't part of the standard installation, if need be.
Jamie Booth
in reply to Nelson • • •