Gentoo for children (request for ebuilders)

plate

Project Katatsumuri, the 166 Mhz Pentium MMX desktop with little memory and even less disk space designated to become the offspring's electronic playground, has taken a giant leap forward since X gracefully recognises the hardware. Now, before I unleash this beast on the unsuspecting rug rats, I'll have to weld the case shut so they refrain from prying chips off the motherboard :twisted:

, and I'll need to install some software appropriate for that age bracket (5 to 10 years).

Given the hardware, emerging this will probably take a few weeks

(GCompris has compiled for 6 hours or so), so there's plenty of leeway for any charitable soul out there who could help with ebuilds for some of the software I haven't found in the portage tree. Besides GCompris, Tuxtype and Lletters are there, but the other projects from Tux4Kids and typical kid stuff like Matritsa, Codebreaker, Groundhog, Lpairs are missing. Maybe it's because some of those aren't stable enough, I don't know.

Whoever wants to pick up this gauntlet, you'll be serving a good cause, too. I'm planning to talk our neighbourhood's elementary school into deploying Gentoo rather than the misconfigured Winblows varieties they currently run. This will require Japanese as default locale across the board, but more importantly, I'll have to largely avoid KDE-based edutainment software, since many of those dusty old school computers are well below a 64 MB memory threshold. Ideal would be a class ebuild that combines software for this age and something like the French debian4kids tcl/tk script stuff to effectively replace standard window managers, but that's probably too much to ask.

Anyway, glad if anybody cares to comment or volunteer. You can also tell me to sod off if you absolutely must.

french tony · Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2002 8:00 pm Post subject:

Ask Bob The Ebuilder :wink:

plate · Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2002 2:18 am Post subject:

dol-sen · Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2003 2:40 am Post subject: Bob the Ebuilder

I am glad to know that there are other parents in gentoo. I don't know how many of the ebuilds you have yet, bu I will be checking them out soon. I have the basic WinXP setup with most of her games installed, some we had for her older sister she is not ready for yet.

I next have to finish my gentoo setup... X etc.. The old system I just retired from her use was an old IBM Aptiva with a P166MMX Overdrive proc, 64 meg ram, 5.2gig hd. The problem was it wouldn't run some of the new games/activities she liked, some were just barely playable. That was the box I started out in Linux a few years ago. I think I'll be setting up an ftp/http server on.

Thank you for the links for kids programs.

Brian

Lovechild · Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2003 11:23 am Post subject:

I'm not a parent, but count me in for the ebuilding...

DooBeDooBeDo · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2002 Posts: 220 Location: UK

I'm willing to do some of the ebuilds too.

Lovechild: PM me with where you're making a start so we don't duplicate any work. I'll start with tuxpaint

although suggestions of 'most wanted' welcome.

plate · Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2003 3:47 pm Post subject:

A very good place to start looking for kid software missing from portage would be the Debian Junior Project, here's a listing of the meta-packages in Debian Jr. TuxPaint would be great for a start! The sourcecode for it and TuxMath, part of the Tux4kids project, is available from Bill Kendrick's site, a guy who develops nifty little apps for anything that has a screen, Atari to Zaurus. Some of his games are very good for children, too (BoboBot, Circus Linux!, Bugsquish, Gem Drop X). There's more at Tux4kids, like Tuxtyping and Alphabet Soup, but I have no idea how usable any of it is.

I suspect there is a hidden wealth of software out there, sometimes very simple stuff that somebody wrote just to get familiar with a programming environment, like the Groundhog or Linux Letters & Numbers, sometimes more complex and targeting older children, like most of what you find in the SEUL/EDU database of applications. It's very difficult to track everything in the wild. Besides, many programs never get updated after the initial release (still usable, but basically unchanged since three or four years), so they're losing visual appeal over time, nothing you can serve a modern four-year-old anymore...

By far the best suite for younger children I've seen (and both my kids' absolute favourite, even ahead of Frozen Bubble

) is GCompris, which is in Portage, but only with version 1.1.0. That one clearly has been abandoned, because the current version is 2.0, but even 1.2.1 had been available since September already...

Really glad someone takes this in hands. If I was any better at scripting than I am, I'd join you right away, but I guess I'll have to limit myself to hunting for source tarballs you guys can ennoble with an ebuild...

carpman · Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2003 11:42 am Post subject:

I beleive there is a linux project dedicated to developing and providing a linux distrib for schools/education, not sure of name but it is is out there. Could be a usefull starting point.

gsfgf · Veteran Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 1266

for the wm, just use fluxbox w/ idesk. Not only is that less hardware intensive, it's also easier to keep the kids form breaking stuff.

DooBeDooBeDo · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2002 Posts: 220 Location: UK

tuxpaint ebuild here: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15530

tuxpaint-stamps soon to follow

DooBeDooBeDo · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2002 Posts: 220 Location: UK

Ok, I improved the first ebuild a bit, and the stamps are there too both attached to the same bug.

[edit] Oops the 'improved' ebuild doesn't work please use the first one :oops:

DooBeDooBeDo · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2002 Posts: 220 Location: UK

matritsa here: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15605

plate · Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2003 3:44 am Post subject:

At that pace we'll be done with the wishlist before the month is over!

Great stuff, thanks a lot! I'll have my beta-testing rug-rats go over it this weekend.

Have you looked at GCompris 2.0, by any chance? It seems to be a little more involved, requiring different libraries than the version already in portage.

DooBeDooBeDo · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2002 Posts: 220 Location: UK

groundhog-1.4 here: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15654

I'll take a look at GCompris next

DooBeDooBeDo · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2002 Posts: 220 Location: UK

Well after creating this ebuild for GCompris 2.1 : https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15716

I found this ebuild for 2.0 : https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14911

so take your pick...

If I missed any dependancies please let me know, but I think I caught them all with the dependancies of the dependancies (if you know what I mean)

Crash1976M · n00b Joined: 30 Aug 2002 Posts: 65

Is it possible to create a group aka kde, x ... for the installation from a live cd btw. for emerege like emerge kidz-stuff ???

DooBeDooBeDo · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2002 Posts: 220 Location: UK

Linux letters and numbers is already in portage - emerge lletters

DooBeDooBeDo · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2002 Posts: 220 Location: UK

lpairs ebuild here: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15749

slyzer · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 12 Oct 2002 Posts: 96

tuxmath here: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15853

The last update was in 2001 but the game is beautiful

cu
slyzer

hook · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2003 6:36 pm Post subject:

i'm not a parent ...but intend when i become one, my kids will use gentoo if it will be still availbale (i think it will be) and i don't give up on it (i probably won't)

but the reason i wanted to post this is that i was wondering: is there a wm made espacially for children, why not, and if someone is thinking of making one?

...that would be IMHO a big breakthroug
_________________
tea+free software+law=hook

(deep inside i'm still a tux's little helper)

axxackall · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2003 7:04 pm Post subject:

If so many ebuilds for good games are submitted to bugzilla, why no one commit the to the tree? Believe me, bugzilla UI is not the best way to look for ebuilds. And if there any doubts about stabity then mask them as unstable (current portage has already many unstable masked ebuilds).
<P>
But anyway, this thread is already very informative and my kid is already enjoying some of those games.

DooBeDooBeDo · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2002 Posts: 220 Location: UK

codebreaker a mastermind style game here: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15863

DooBeDooBeDo · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2002 Posts: 220 Location: UK

plate · Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 3:31 am Post subject:

There's currently a freeze on new packages for Gentoo Linux 1.4, that's why software that hasn't been in Portage yet is unlikely to get in before there's a bump to the release number. As to updates, they usually get ascended to Portage very quickly, if in fact the maintainer is still an active developer. GCompris would need some investigation why it wasn't upgraded.

About the WM I mentioned in my first post back in August: One day I came across something that may qualify as a "window manager" for kids, an interface written in tcl/tk, but it was unfinished, and I can't even find any references to it anymore. The author, [name deleted by Neddyseagoon], seems to have vanished from the face of the planet, ever since his declaration of change of programming language (he was pondering Java), and the old URL (debian4kids.fr.st) doesn't work anymore, either. Stupid me didn't keep the sources...

If anybody comes across a screenshot of a much too colourful room that looks like the interior of one of those Mouse Maisy picturebooks, with a table and cupboards and drawers you can click on to launch applications, that's it!

Two more items I found out there: Penguzzle and Planets.

My kids, by the way, send their greetings. Thanks to Tuxpaint they have now officially declared their computer infinitely cooler than their stupid Gameboy Advance.

dol-sen · Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 7:24 pm Post subject: penguzzle

Well, I am very pleased to see all the actitvity in this thread since I first found or was directed to this thread!

I have downloaded the penguzzle program from plate's link. Not knowing much about Tcl/Tk I have attempted to install and test it. I have been as yet unable to successfully run the prog as it seems to have been written for a different version of Tk. Here is what I have found out so far:

Looking thru the install script it requires a program called wishx, thru trial and error it seems to require /dev-lang/tk. after emerging tk, the file /usr/bin/wish8.3 and a link wish showed up. The install script still did not find the wishx dependancy so I made a link