My kid’s PC is REALLY old. I decided for Xmas I’d get them a new PC and ordered one of the $199 Wal-Mart Linux PCs.
Tonight I started to tinker with it in preparation of sticking it under the tree. The hardware seems decent. The OS it ships with ‘gOS‘ is not so hot. Out of the box the UI is really horrible and I found it completely unintuitive. I couldn’t figure out how to easily change the resolution, then I accidentally blew away the dock menu and couldn’t figure out how to restore it. Apparently this is based on the Enlightenment window manager. Why they picked this over something like Gnome or XFCE I have no idea. It is REALLY unfriendly. After about 10 minutes I finally said screw it and am downloading Edubuntu. This should provide a more ‘Windows’ like UI which they are familiar with while providing me a familiar interface.
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Keep us posted on the change to OS. I’m curious as to how well it will handle the changeover (drivers, etc.)
way to break your kids’ gift before they even get a hand on it
and then just install your legacy OS rather than let the children grow up on something that isn’t mainstream, thereby improving their chances of knowing a *computer* vs. only learning the simplistic *gnome* (shudder).
OK, OK, i kid. Except for the shudder part. Enlightenment is a change but I’ve read the gOS is very intuitive, but I’ve not tried it, and my experiences with E17 have been, “wow that screen shot looks nice, i wonder how many config files I’ll have to edit to get my desktop looking like that…”
I haven’t read much on gOS but it appears to be build on Ubuntu anyway so the Edubuntu install was problem free. I didn’t run into any hardware issues - it even picked up the widescreen monitor and set the correct resolution.
I messed with Enlightenment YEARS ago and checking on their site it still seems like they are in 0.x releases?! Initially I was impressed with the dock, etc - it was only after I started trying to DO something I became frustrated. I’ve got the install disk which will work as a “Live CD” so I may experiment with it a bit more on my own PC later.
And speaking of (shudders)
Gnome’s gotta be better than WinXP which is what they had before… 
Ugh. Not sure if it’s an Ubuntu bug or Edubuntu but I can’t seem to create another user on the system. I get all kinds of goofy permission errors. So far everything I’ve Googled hasn’t worked. Due to time I’m reinstalling and just going to setup one of the kids as a user during installation…
Quick followup -the PC was a success! I reinstalled Edubuntu and simply used the console to create the new users and everything seemed happy. Not sure what I did the first time… Installed Flash and the kids were off and running on pbskids.org, etc…
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[...] Both my kids got WebKinz for Christmas. They also got a new computer which I discuss here. [...]
Google + Ubuntu = gOS…
What is gOS ?
Have you already request an Ubuntu Free CDs for yourself? I have review it on my previous post, and hope you too evaluate it and pass the CDs around. gOs is the new Linux-based platform that is currently becoming well-known because of it …