We have a PC that we use just for the kids. They are able to play their games and access the internet from it. I use a wireless USB device about the size of a thumb drive to allow them access to the home network (internet). This way the wife and I can control when they access the internet by either letting them have the USB device to plug into thier machine. A little while ago, there was a error that corrupted the AV software and for some reason it no longer likes to recognize the Wireless USB device. I have tried a few different things to try to get it back on the NET, but have had no success.
The solution I am going with is to blow their box and reload the OS and such. Seems kind of extreme but without spending gobs of time on it I think it will be a easy enough solution. While doing my morning reading today i came across an interesting linux based OS. it is called EDUBUNTU. Not sure if anyone has heard of this or not. It seems pretty dynamic and customizable.
Does anyone have experience with this or one of it’s sister OS’s? I have to do some more reading, but I am curious how the kids WIN based games will cooperate with this OS.
Ubuntu
I use Ubuntu — the parent distribution — for about 6-8 hours every day as my primary workstation.
Email, web surfing, console access, admin tools, and the like are simply awesome with it. Gaming? Meh, not so much. Subscribe to Transgaming and you may have some luck with 3D games, but 2D educational titles are woefully undersupported.
One option I use at work is to run Windows inside of a VMWare image. That works really well for the stuff not covered by the base distribution + Transgaming. However, it’s memory-hungry (Windows is, and running Windows + Linux even more so), thus not for everyone. I did fine on a gigabyte of memory, but it would be a bit sluggish at times. With 2GB, everything flies along just fine 🙂
Edubuntu includes a large variety of educational software in the distro, though, if I recall correctly. Getting the Nvidia video card working is a snap (just download and run the binary drivers from their web site), and there are a number of games my kids really like available on Linux. They may not be the same ones they are used to, but try it for a few months. If it doesn’t work out, blow it away and re-install XP. Nothing lost.
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Matthew P. Barnson