FAQ
- Q: How do you pronounce Qimo?
- A: The proper way to pronounce Qimo is “kim-oh”, as in “eskimo”. It does not make use of the typical English pronunciation of “QU” as “qwah”.
- Q: Why an Eskimo?
- A: Our son is Quinn, and it’s a referenced to a song written by Bob Dylan and made popular by Manfred Mann in the mid-1960’s. Wikipedia notes that the
- ‘subject of the song is the arrival of the mighty Quinn (an eskimo)… who changes despair into joy and chaos into rest, and attracts attention from the animals.” We’ve sung the song to our son since the day he was born, and because the distribution was inspired by him, it seemed only fitting.
- Q: I heard that the name Eskimo is offensive…
- A: Many people have heard somewhere that the name Eskimo is offensive, and that the name Inuit should be used instead. According to Wikipedia, this stems from the incorrect belief that the word Eskimo means “eaters of raw meat”. Today, most scholars believe it means ‘snowshoe-netter”. While Inuit is indeed the preferred term for Canadian natives, who are mostly Inuit, the name Eskimo is still the most commonly accepted term for Alaskan natives, who are largely Yupic.
- Q: What are the hardware requirements for Qimo?
- A: Qimo needs a minimum of 256MB of memory to run from the CD, or 192MB to install. At least 6 GB of hard drive space is recommended, and a 400MHz or faster CPU.
- Q: Why doesn’t Qimo include Flash support?
- A: Unfortunately Adobe’s licensing terms for Flash don’t allow us to distribute it as a part of Qimo. You will need to install it yourself after you have installed Qimo. Fortunately, this is easy enough to do, simply search for “Flash Plugin” in the Add/Remove dialog, check the box next to “Macromedia Flash Plugin”, then press the “Apply Changes” button.
- Q: How is Qimo different than Edubuntu?
- A: Qimo was designed to be a standalone home computer for kids, rather than a networked classroom computer. The interface for Qimo is designed to be easy enough for a 3 year old to use, without having to navigate menus or manage multiple open windows. Also, Qimo will also run from a LiveCD, and doesn’t require an existing Ubuntu installation the way Edubuntu does.
- Q: Why not use Sugar from the OLPC project?
- A: Sugar is a very good interface for the OLPC computers it was made for, but many of the design decisions and interfaces don’t work nearly as well on standard PCs. Qimo uses a customized XFCE interface to provide a fast, lightweight, and most importantly an easy to navigate interface that works well with standard computers, monitors and keyboards.
