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History & Design

A while back, I was building a PC for my then 3-year-old daughter out of some 10-year-old Pentium II parts.  I thought it would be simple to grab a Linux distribution and fire up her computer, but I found that many distributions, even the relatively lite distributions (usually with the XFCE desktop) were not as light as I needed.  And because the prominent educational distributions, like Edubuntu, emphasized a school-based server environment, I found these to be too cumbersome and slow for use on old equipment.

Left to my own devices, I sought a personal solution: a lite distribution with a selection of my preferred open-source educational software and suitable for a parent & child at home.  After trial-and-error (we're talking about Linux here) and piggy-backing on the energetic development of lite distributions over the last few years, I finally arrived at a distribution that was spry, well-supported, and actively developed: Arch Linux.  After loading a selection of open-source educational software, I considered the problem solved.  But then I thought that I couldn't be the only person who wanted to use out-dated equipment at home to give their kid an educational jumpstart, so I decided to formalize and publicize the distribution I built for my daughter. 

This is a microscale (i.e., one-person) effort, but if this distribution should prove useful to others, my larger hope is that foundations and charitable organizations that provide computers to disadvantaged youth might use the distribution as the pre-installed operating system.

So you know what you're getting, the design requirements for the distribution are:

Lite, very lite

  • Maximize potential useage across social, economic, and national boundaries (but English only)
  • Low system hardware requirements (Pentium II and up)
  • Fast startup
  • Responsive user experience
  • What "lite" means to me: OpenBox windows manager within the LXDE framework and the SLiM display manager
  • Minimize complications and bulk from non-essential software

Live DVD

  • Dedicated PC unnecessary
  • Safe to use on family's only PC
  • Leaves no software traces
  • Portability: use on any PC at home or while traveling
  • Only needs reboot to start
  • No license needed for Windows (95/98/2000/XP/Vista/7) or any other software
  • Indestructability: cannot be corrupted, misconfigured

Educational Software

  • Focus on prominent and well-supported open-source software applications
  • Exclusion of most productivity software
  • Actively maintained
  • Mature state of development and reliable, with not too many bugs
  • Focus on educational software, with only a few classic games included
  • Suitable for use in a straightforward desktop configuration at home

Arch Linux Distribution as Foundation

  • Robust and highly maintained.
  • Arch Linux is actively developed with energetic community
  • Straightforward path for building up a custom distribution and remastering (larch)
  • Rolling release for easy maintenance and regular updates
  • Ease-of-use design
  • OpenBox windows manager (lite)

General Guidelines for the UKnow4Kids Project

The UKnow4Kids distribution is being developed under the following constratints:

  1. This project is strictly non-commercial.
  2. The UKnow4Kids Linux Distribution is "open source" and will be provided at no cost for public & global download.
  3. I will accrue absolutely no net monetary or commercial benefit.  Incidental revenue from DVD distribution or schwag (e.g., t-shirts, mousepads) will only offset costs (mostly for hosting), and any excess revenue will be donated at the end of the calendar year to one of the software projects included on UKnow4Kids.
  4. UKnow4Kids will never be sold as a product of a commercial venture.
  5. Constituent software of the UKnow4Kids Linux Distribution are themselves open source, and are therefore unencumbered by licensing restrictions, either direct or derived.