Ask HN: What kind of setup do you run for your children?

I have a 6 year old daughter I want to get setup with a custom desktop. I am thinking about running a custom Linux distribution on an old iMac (form factor) and lock it down via custom DNS/keep it offline. Curious what you are running for your kids?

At 6? Honestly, I wouldn't (and didn't) provide a setup at all at that age.

I just let them use my ubuntu machine, they 50% of what they do is through a browser, so have setup their own profile, and the other 50% is gaming.

My 5 year old has his own iPad. We choose which games he can install, and he uses YouTube kids to watch videos (which we curate).

He plays all sorts of games: Monument Valley, Hello Kitty Adventure Island, What the Car, and more.

He also uses a few “learn to read” apps like Teach Your Monster and Khan Academy Kids.

We generally don’t restrict his hours on it, but also ensure he goes outside daily for walks, playground trips, or to ride his bike. He seems to regulate his usage on his own, he’ll get bored after a while and do something else. When he gets into a game he’ll spend a lot of hours on it, then beat it or lose interest. Some of the games require reading so he will ask me to play with him so I can read things or tell him what to do.

There seems to be a lot of moral or health concern from other parents regarding devices, and many at his preschool did not allow any device usage. But I haven’t found those concerns to be based on anything tangible.

I'm going to do the same thing when my son is older. 6-yr old is a bit stretch as he is easily addicted to TV so I think computer is definitely another level up. Maybe 7-yr old is better. But I need to do it before his friends introduce pads and phones to him so definitely before 8.

I'm thinking about getting a Rpi box slapped with an old monitor, a keyboard and a mouse. It should go straight into MS-DOS after booting -- from an emulator of course. Then I'll introduce my childhood to him. Not sure if it's the best idea, but at least he can play old MS-DOS games starting from the self-bootable ones like Alley cat.

I'll introduce game programming to him using QBASIC. I probably have to learn it with him as I never learned it when I was young.