Comment by austin-cheney
2 days ago
I would put your entire house behind a custom DNS relay you control, like a PiHole. Use that to eliminate access to advertisements, pornography, some walware, and social media.
I would also consider use of Gentoo as your Linux distribution to force learning about building packages and command line. I would avoid Arch as that might be too much of a challenge.
For me the goal would be forcing them to learn how this stuff works. I would emphasize scripting in the shell like bash scripts, JavaScript via node, Python, and possibly even Perl. This will take a lot of guidance to get this started because they will need some real world use cases about why they immediately benefit.
Once you get the OS finally set up create an ISO of it and put it on both a thumb drive and home file server. Give the kiddo root access to their own computer and let them really break stuff because you can restore from backup
Edit:
Immediately downvoted. This comment apparently caused a nerd god to shed a tear.
> For me the goal would be forcing them to learn how this stuff works
Ignoring the hilarity of this comment, that's not really how kids learn.
- "Dad, I'd like to draw a house on this screen"
- "Ok kiddo, first we have to download stage1 tarball from FTP mirror I know the name of without looking it up"
"Dad, can I play a game?"
"No! You're learning Perl now! End of discussion!"
You could do both from the same machine. Just sayin'...
Thanks for this perspective. For many kids this might be too much of a learning curve -- but for some, it might be right on.
I learned a TON in the 80s as a kid by rummaging around with a retired Kaypro II running CP/M, breaking stuff by accident and fixing, and trying to hack the few games it had...
Starting hardcore carries the risk of giving them a bad firs impression that can keep them from willing to learn thise things in the future.
Its how I learned this stuff back in the days of DOS.
So then pretend its easy and get them an iphone.
I suspect the goal is you, as a parent, want to feel good to yourself that you are doing something positive for a child. If that's all this is really about then put them in a corner with some educational videos and give yourself a high-five.
> Its how I learned this stuff back in the days of DOS.
In the days of DOS there was no (widespread) alternative.
You first need to capture their interest, otherwise they will see the shiny GUIs other people are using and wonder why they have to write long hard-to-remember commands instead of double-clicking on an icon.
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OP this is who you are setting up your children to be like
I was going to say I'd help them install Gentoo or Arch. I learned a lot myself with some help of a friend through SSH when installing and using Gentoo.
Do not pre-install, but make them part of the installation process. :P
Learning to build packages? Gentoo? PERL?
As a first platform for a preteen?
Its how I started learning this stuff as a preteen before Linux as a thing. If learning is too hardcore just get them an iphone.
I was literally contributing to Gentoo Linux at age 13. Before, my dad started me on Slackware.
edit: downvoted. Some of you all simply have no belief in or respect for the intelligence of children.
I had my first computer when I was 7. It was a 286 from way back in the day. I learned to navigate around a command prompt and deface some of the IBM software my dad brought home. If was fun to get into things, reconfigure things for games, and just solve problems that came up. None of this was super complicated. I mostly taught myself, but my dad spent the time to get me started and help to figure it out.
I didn't start programming until age 28, because my dad couldn't program and I didn't how to get started on my own. But, had he gotten me started on programming too I would have been programming from the command line as a preteen. I knew other preteens who were doing so.
That is why the comments here are so puzzling. Supposedly this a community of mostly software people. I take it most of these people commenting here lack the focus to figure any of this out themselves, much less teach a child to do it. There is even a comment in here from somebody not knowing what to teach a child and then being completely mystified about it once its pointed out.
My wife is a special education teacher. The common reality she sees (the normal parent) just plants a phone their kid's hands and ignores them all day. To most people that is a technology education, the hands off approach. I really get the feeling that is what most people are looking for something to throw at a child and then wash their hands of it, and the comments here further reinforce this assumption.
Didn't downvote you, I remember my first steps too.
But we weren't the overwhelmed gen alpha consumers. Average teen-and-under currently is far less technically inclined (including analytic skills) than a teen of the 90's or 90's had to be.
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This would not work for mine, they just wouldn't use it under those conditions. I would rather show them a good time initially and increase complexity if they take a liking to learning about computers. My eldest is much more artistic than technical and has little interest in programming and tech in general. But he took to Krita on Linux with enthusiasm.
BTW didn't downvote you.
My wife, who is clearly not a child, thought all the same things.
Her computer is old and we are no a budget... So now she is running Linux kicking and screaming. In all fairness there was no learning curve at all because she hardly knew how to use Windows in the first place. I showed her how to install applications from the command line and configure her games to run native or with Wine. She is happy camper, especially since her favorite games are running faster than on Windows.
What I really suspect is that people want their children to just be smart... on their own. If only there were some tools you could buy that would just do it for you.
The reality is children smart enough, at any age, to really do anything on a computer beyond gaming, social media, or ReactJS can learn anything, but it will take direct involvement from a parent to coach them through it. This is exactly the same if the kid is 8 or 18. There is no magic Linux set up that will just do it automagically.
I sure am glad I had normal parents
> I would put your entire house behind a custom DNS relay you control
Advertising companies are pushing DoH to remove control from you and give them the control, so be aware of that
> I would emphasize scripting in the shell like bash scripts
What would they want to script? What will they achieve? Why would they be interested in this?
>Advertising companies are pushing DoH to remove control from you and give them the control, so be aware of that
True. My first naive attempt at content filtering for my kids was to use a family friendly DNS for the whole network. That's when I learned about chrome's secure DNS option, witch effectively bypasses my intended settings. I guess endpoint control is the only effective option. A mandatory http proxy could be used to filter by hostname too. None of them easy, and I'm supposed to be an expert. Normal people has little chance of implementing technical parental controls.
> What would they want to script? What will they achieve? Why would they be interested in this?
That's where you, the parent, are required to spend with the child to help them answer those same questions. The way to answer it is what problems do you have that you wish were solved... then show the kid that.
Problems I want to solve then get my kids to solve them? Sure they can do some
Because they will have no problems a computer can solve with bash scripts
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I think the benefits of DoH (& ECH) outweigh the negatives, especially when it comes to censorship resistance.