Live data from Hacker News

Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

doudoulinux.org

11–20 of 98 posts

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#11

What an unfortunate name... I can only imagine telling a young kid he uses "Doo Doo Linux"

Doudou [1] is French for a kid's favorite, day and night, bring everywhere teddy bear. You can see further francophone influence in the use of SPIP (the CMS used for the website).

[1] http://dictionnaire.reverso.net/francais-anglais/doudou

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#12

Reminds me a bit of the One Laptop Per Child project, which according to some people is a little bit defunct. They produced a distro called Sugar ( https://www.sugarlabs.org ) that might be worth looking into. Now tablets have largely overcome laptops as an inexpensive computing device for children. EDIT: not defunct as people let me know. thanks for pointing this out.

I just donated $100 to OLPC yesterday, so I might be swayed here, but I think laptops still fit the cheap-to-produce educational niche – the newer models have a tablet mode, but a flat tablet couldn't easily hold the wifi antennas needed for community-based "intra"net.

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#13
post #6

From their "Translator's FAQ" (which I think is meant for volunteers to help with localization): "How should I tell to pronounce DoudouLinux? In French and Chinese it is pronounced “doodoolinux”. However as the word “doodoo” has a weird meaning in slang American English, we recommend English-speakers to say it as if it was an English word, the way they prefer to say it. We also ask to not write “doodoolinux” at all t…

I think in Chinese it would be pronounced more like doughdough?

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#14
post #6

From their "Translator's FAQ" (which I think is meant for volunteers to help with localization): "How should I tell to pronounce DoudouLinux? In French and Chinese it is pronounced “doodoolinux”. However as the word “doodoo” has a weird meaning in slang American English, we recommend English-speakers to say it as if it was an English word, the way they prefer to say it. We also ask to not write “doodoolinux” at all t…

Looks like "dough dough" or "dow dow" to me, an English native speaker.

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#17
post #11

What an unfortunate name... I can only imagine telling a young kid he uses "Doo Doo Linux"

Doudou [1] is French for a kid's favorite, day and night, bring everywhere teddy bear. You can see further francophone influence in the use of SPIP (the CMS used for the website). [1] http://dictionnaire.reverso.net/francais-anglais/doudou

But in English, a "Doo-doo" is one of a kids favourite pass times before they are capable of doing much other than drinking milk and sleeping. If Google "doo doo", and you get a lot of pictures of excrement (NSFW, probably).

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#18
I tried Doudou, and then Qimo, and finally gave up and gave my kids xubuntu.

The sad truth is that the childrens games like Childs Play are sad stale games with hopeless UIs and glaring bugs like mislabelled animals in quizzes and things.

I have lots of feedback from watching my kids learning to use and play with Doudou and Qimo; even though it is several years ago now, I think - from looking at the screenshots - that nothing much has changed :(

http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/19500788060/my-te...

I hope there are modern set of games produced, but I'd imagine they'd be better served over http into the browser than as native apps.

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#19
I used to have this on a USB key for my daughter from age 2 to 5 (she is now 6).

The UX was terrible, full of inconsistencies, with different icon symbols in different positions from application to application to close windows, confirm menu choices etc.

But my daughter loved it to bits =) Some games are a lot of fun for a toddler.

And guess what, I think the struggle she experienced with the inconsistent UI may have been the best "school" she could have had for "real world" UIs.

At 6yo she is now completely autonomous navigating a Windows environment and any of the multitude of "Frankenstein" UIs I throw at her.

Might even revisit it now for the 1st grade level games I remember she couldn't play back then.

Re: Doudou Linux – For children from 2 to 12 years old

#20

Reminds me a bit of the One Laptop Per Child project, which according to some people is a little bit defunct. They produced a distro called Sugar ( https://www.sugarlabs.org ) that might be worth looking into. Now tablets have largely overcome laptops as an inexpensive computing device for children. EDIT: not defunct as people let me know. thanks for pointing this out.

Yeah the early OLPC thing seems to have got derailed with the whole Windows and CEO nonsense and lost the NH-style techies rooting for it :(
Post reply on HN