Children's Distro Releases Preview

As a gran'ma I like to occasionally testdrive Linux distributions marketed for children. Most are charming and cute with their cartoonish characters, brightly colored wallpaper, and edutainment software. DoudouLinux is a bit different than most though, in that it's developed for the very young.

Other children's distributions try to cater to a large demographic of ages, but with space limits they seem to put more emphasis on the upper elementary to high school age group whereas DoudouLinux is designed for preschool and lower elementary age. From the oversized icons to the simplified interface, Doudou certainly welcomes little hands and short attention spans.

The other day a new developmental release was announced. DoudouLinux 2011-11 is a preview of the upcoming official release due mid-2012. It ships as an installable live DVD, but the installation notes explain that Doudou doesn't play well with others. It's a little selfish and wants the whole hard drive to itself! Well, you don't have to tell your kids that part.

Some of the listed improvements for this release include:

* new application PixFrogger
* animated splash during system boot
* autologin can be activated by selecting only one activity in the activities menu
* internal hard disks are now all mounted read-only at boot, which really prevents children from writing on them, and even from reading using the file explorer PCManfm

If you have small children or grandchildren, then be sure to check out DoudouLinux.