COMP 3000 2011 Report: Qimo

Background

Screenshot

The name of the chosen distribution is Qimo; officially Qimo For Kids. It is a modified version of Ubuntu made especially for kids. It's goal is to make it very user friendly, enough to be used by someone as low as 3 years old. It's meant to introduce computers to kids and provide educational opportunities through programs and games.

It's made by Michael and Michelle Hall. It can be obtained at the Qimo website, http://www.qimo4kids.com. The ISO is over 700 MB in size, and it can run the OS without installation. Installation of the OS takes ___ MB of hard drive space.

Installation/Startup

After mounting the ISO and starting up the device, I was first given option to choose my language. Immediately after that I was given many options from the ISO.

• Try Qimo without any change to your computer
• Install Qimo
• Check disc for defects
• Test memory
• Boot from first hard disk

Try Qimo

Clicking the first option brings you to a splash screen of Qimo, and then the loading screen appeared. It was simply a black screen, not very informative (I guess to not confuse kids). Then it loaded up.

This option provided the full version of the OS, however any changes made are not permanent. Creating files or progress in game is lost when shut down.

Basic Operation

At the bottom is very big, childish looking icons. Text editor, "gCompris" which is some sort of __, "child's play" which is some sort of ___, "tux paint" which is a childrens version of paint, "tux math" which is a bunch of ___, "tux type" which is a __, "laby" which is a labyrinthe program that seems to teach kids programming, making each step in the labyrinth a function call in python.

References

TODO: http://www.qimo4kids.com/ http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=qimo