New Website Launched

Hey, Saw you at Scale7. Was impressed with the fact that people take the time to do this for little kids too! Thank you. I have a 4yo and 1yo grandsons. And getting them into these activities as part of their overall learning is a great beginning.
Sam

Also saw you at SCaLE. What you guys are doing is awesome. Keep it up, and keep an eye on Sugar and Edubuntu. You guys rule. If you need any help with anything, let me know.

Saw you on Cnet news.com.com and I will give it a spin tonight. We have Edubuntu but my 7yo is willing to try any OS. I love the artwork.

Any reason for using IIS + aspx instead of any LAMP?

GermanG,
Because both this site's creation and hosting were generously donated to us.

Our charity site, http://www.quinncoincorporated.org is LAMP.

Hi!
Cool project congrats!

Funny, I thought the same as GermanG. Well, it is a valid answer that you gave: creation and hosting is donated. But actually, I would think that this is exactly what the famous community could help you with, for free and on free software.

Just two starting points to think about: You could aks sourceforge for hosting the ISO and you could ask the ubuntuforums.org for giving you an own small forum for qimo.

I understand you also need and want your own domain, and by all means keep it. But anyway, think about it -- there is a ton of options to get the online presence supported by the helpful people...

Marcus,
We initially checked into using SourceForge or Canonical for help with our web presence, but it wasn't going to be possible. For what it's worth, this site actually does use the open source BlogEngine.net for content management.

The goal of Qimo isn't to further free/open source software, although we do that when we can. The goal is to get usable, educational software in the hands of kids. When the easiest/fastest/cheapest way of achieving that is with IIS and .Net, that's what we'll use.

Hey this looks great!!!!! I'm burning the iso now for my 4 year old. I was just wondering if there is a community forum or not.

Anyhoo, keep up the good work!

Scott

Hi all! Figured if we're going to introduce the family, I may as well get in here, too. I'm Michelle Hall - Mike's wife, Brian's sister-in-law, Quinn & Ainsley's mom. Just wanted to let everyone know how much we appreciate the support and ideas from everyone! Please keep sending us input & ideas.

Those of you who have tried this with your children, how did the kids respond? What were their thoughts?

A forums system would be nice, and perhaps in the works at some point... I'll keep you posted. Additionally, if any of you should like to recycle computers in your own communities, please let us know. I'll be happy to help you get set up.

My daughter loves it!!!!!! I've just got her playing the matching games atm, but she is in heaven - and quite good at it I might add!

I haven't really had a chance to play around with it, on the technical end, but I was wondering what you guys are using for the root password?

Scott

Scott,
Like Ubuntu, Qimo doesn't come with a root password set, you'll have to use sudo. That said, the user "qimo" doesn't have sudo access, you don't want your daughter changing system settings after all.

If you're running from the live CD, there is a "ubuntu" user with a blank password (just press enter when prompted for one), and when you install it will ask you to setup an adult's account which will have regular sudo access.

Hope that clears things up, and I'm so glad she's enjoying it.

Thanks, that does clear things up! So far we are just running the livecd, but I need root/sudo privileges to get wireless working, etc.

I'm familiar enough with *buntus to work my way around, I just want to see what's under the hood before we go for the full install.

BTW, I'll be bringing the livecd to the story hour I go to at the local library to show the other parents - I'm quite sure they'll dig it!

Scott

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Hi Mike,

Compliments on your creation, new install, but the kids think it's cool.
I do have an issue though. I created an adult account, but it opens in Xbunutu and for some reason doesn't access my wireless while Qimo user has no problem. This leads to not being able to download updates and add programs. 6 yo is begging for chess program.

Great job on the distro! I have a feeling this is going to be really popular!

Much Success to you!

I was just looking for something for my two nieces from UK. Glad to see someone put together something education for children. I found out about this on Distribution Watch website. I was going to put Edbuntu on a system for them. But when I found this this is much better since they are 5 and 8 years old. I am going to built a virtural machine and run on VMware player. Then they can run Windows and Qimo at the same time.

Thank You for putting the effort to make something for children.

Daniel

I must say I was very intrigued by the idea. But no, I tried the Qimo OS, and I'm afraid it gets 1.5 on 10 point scale. Super buggy, takes way to long to boot and the overall performance is awful. Not at all what I would expect for children to use.

ars265,
It takes a long time to boot from the CD, but is quite a bit faster once installed. Can you please email us information about the bugs you encountered so that I can try and correct them?

very nice,
not only my kids love qimo
i love it too
i think it will become the most comnly used for schools and for fun.

You can download and install additional games from the Add/Remove programs. All of the games there are open source and virus free.

Yay! I haven't been using Edubuntu, I didn’t even know that either Qimo or Edubuntu existed … what an awesome idea! Kids for games on grown up PCs are all good, but you have to supervise the opening and closing procedures, and they have to be old enough to know not to click on any Zonealarm messages or download any fake anti-spyware . Awesome idea! I know its an OS, but I'd love if I could just log into a different account when I boot up my regular home computer to get to Qimo, so I didn’t have to get a different PC for it.

Since Qimo is based on Ubuntu Linux, you don't have to worry about Zonealarm or spyware. The user account the kids use doesn't even have permission to install applications. You can install Qimo in a dual-boot setup, so you just reboot your Windows computer and load up Qimo instead, or boot it from the CD itself without ever installing it, which is the safest method if you're concerned about the programs and files you already have installed.

I just wanted to say about root password:

Log-in as Live User (not Qimo)
Select Menu->Advanced->Terminal
At the terminal prompt, type:
sudo passwd
Type your new root password twice and you're set. After that, you can su and type the new password and voila! you're root.

Hope that helps!