I can remember when my daughter was 7-8 years old & I found her successfully navigating the computer with fluxbox as the interface. When I said she could have a prettier look with the other WM she said she hadn’t realised she could do that. A few months later I offered to help her switch between OSs to complete some task & she said “it’s OK dad – I know how to change from linux to windows”.

I’m sort of, well, not worried, but I do wonder, if the USA fails to get beyond Microsoft (ie. it becomes the last and only stronghold) then will it sleepwalk into being a nation of people who can’t eat the right amount of food nor use a computer?

Now too if they mention a website or toy on pbs or some kids’ show or commercial, he’ll find a way to find it. He’s got a little netbook now with Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it in advance of his 6th birthday.

I loved the thing that he asked if there was any Linux on the computer on school and his teacher didn’t know what it even was.

I think it depends on what you feed them digitally, it has nothing to do with brightness or whatever. Linux has many more ways to approach it than Windows.

Thanks again,
Martin

@Sebas, I know, I love knetwalk Kids get bored of the same game very fast so he prefers surfing that web pages. Anyway, from time to time he opens some installed games by himself (and Kickoff helps him a lot to find where games are, btw) .

@Alex, he’s got basic reading skills. This is Spain: From 3-5 y.o kids are taught numbers and letters, basic mathematic operations and so on, aside of other things. From 4-7 y.o they start writing and reading: they first go associating groups of letters to phonemes, then reading basic sentences and progress into writing and reading longer texts. My nephew can copy text and write anything if is being helped and is able to read very basic sentences. What I meant is that he has not the knowledge to read and understand menu’s text by himself just yet, independently of that he might understand some word. Take into account too that he eventually may find text in three different languages: Galician, his primary language (KDE and Windows Vista are set to that locale), Spanish and English (which are found surfing the web).