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Re:Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software (2014) by freedomben on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @10:48AM (#24481797)
I agree with your philosophy, but I'm interested in why specifically Chromebooks are banned (and did you only ban chromebooks or did you ban everything that isn't free?). Especially with the newest chromebooks, it's cake to install anything in the Debian repos. It's also worth noting that the vast majority of ChromeOS is also open source.

I'm more curious because I banned Windows and Apple (at least if I'm paying for it), but I let the Chromebooks stay. My son has learned a lot about Linux and life on the CLI getting Minecraft to run in the Debian container on our Chromebook.

Re:Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software (2014) by solarman5000 on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @11:46AM (#24482593)
Stallman's TED talk had a profound impact on me. I think he is right, but realistically, it would be extremely difficult to take it to the extreme that he suggests. The best I can do is eliminate what I can and keep learning so I can do more. I've only been a full time Linux user for 3 years, but in that time I've learned how powerful it is, and can't help but think, if I started on this two decades ago, I'd be even more powerful in the real world than I already am.

I recognize all the contributions Google has made, and overall I think they are a lot better than other companies, but at the end of the day they are a company and their end goal is making money and not always what is best for my kids and society in general. I tried wiping chromeOS and putting Linux on, but the whole container thing annoyed me and reminded me of the PS3.. At any minute, Google can kill this functionality. So I opted to drop it completely in favor of old thinkpads and ubuntu.

If your kids like Minecraft, I cannot suggest enough the "learning Python with minecraft" book and optionally the Udemy course for teaching kids python. In 3 months, both my 8 and 10 year old are building skyscrapers with a few lines of code. It has been a huge creative outlet for them. Bonus if you have them do it on a raspberry pi

Re:Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software (2014) by freedomben on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @12:19PM (#24483046)
> If your kids like Minecraft, I cannot suggest enough the "learning Python with minecraft" book and optionally the Udemy course for teaching kids python

Thank you, I will check it out! I just retired and older Pi from production that would be perfect for this actually...