If you have kids and want to get them to do other things on the computer besides watching Drake and Josh or playing video games, institute an embargo and have them start drawing with a great free program Tux Paint.

School starts early in Georgia. The kids are all back at it. It was on a pre-semester visit to my son’s high school that I got a shock on Friday.

Edubuntu is a customized version of Ubuntu aimed at children in educational environments. According to the distributions homepage, Edubuntu is "Linux for Young Human Beings." That works out well for me, since I have three of those in my house. I homeschool my children and use Edubuntu on a couple of our computers.

There’s nothing worse than hearing how an entire school district is switching operating systems from Mac to Windows (or vice versa) because that’s what the “business” world relies on or some other blather. The costs associated with the transition are enormous and the whole ‘to do’ is unnecessary, because features on applications mimic one another.

Full Circle - the Ubuntu Community Magazine are proud to
announce our fourth issue. It contains : Edubuntu - What’s in it for the kids?; How-To : Hosting Code on LaunchPad, Learning Scribus part 4 and Keep your kids safe in Ubuntu; Preview of Miro 0.9.8.'; Interview with Ubuntu Developer Colin Watson; Letters, Q&A, MyDesktop, MyPC, Top5 and more!

What does education have to do with Linux, or free software in general, you ask? In this article, I am going to answer this question and describe available open source educational programs for your kids.

Kiddix Computing has come up with a Linux-based operating system designed especially for children aged 5-10. All of the icons for applications are situated around the edge of the desktop. There's e-mail, a browser, an office suite, a paint program and some games (both educational and just plain fun). All are built with open-source code, and everything has a user interface designed for kids.

For any parent, myself included, setting your kids loose on the net is a daunting prospect. We have to do it because the net is a fact of life - it's in our schools, the workplace, public libraries and in many if not most homes of the developed world. Therefore, do we really have any option but to give them Linux?

Watch out, parents - close the windows, and protect your kids. Ballmer is on the move again, this time to put the final nail into his own coffin.